


Call and Answer

by AirgiodSLV



Series: Call and Answer [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-17
Updated: 2010-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-19 01:29:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“Call if you need me,” Arthur says, “and I’ll come.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Call and Answer

**Author's Note:**

> Originally for [this prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/9327.html?thread=17156207#t17156207) on the kink meme, although I took a few liberties. There is another Arthur/Cobb fill and gorgeous artwork there that better fit the prompt, so definitely check those out! Huge thanks to [](http://liketheroad.livejournal.com/profile)[**liketheroad**](http://liketheroad.livejournal.com/) for cheerleading like no other, to [](http://cupiscent.livejournal.com/profile)[**cupiscent**](http://cupiscent.livejournal.com/) for being willing to drop everything and give me a second opinion, and to [](http://blythely.livejournal.com/profile)[**blythely**](http://blythely.livejournal.com/) for putting far more hard work and support into this than it deserved.

The job is perfectly mundane, right up until it isn’t.

They’ve gone the dream-kidnapping route, which is unimaginative at best, but the extractor has no head for subtlety and the mark isn’t a challenge.

There are three of them on the team. The extractor – whose name is Jones, as straightforward and boring as the rest of him – is new to Eames but has a reputation for being solid. They’d lost their point man a day before the job to an unknown emergency – or more likely, a better offer – which is why Arthur is currently standing eight feet away, wearing a ski mask, an assault rifle held casually at his side.

Arthur had been distinctly less than pleased about coming into a job in the middle, with only someone else’s shoddy research notes to go on, but the paycheck was five figures and Arthur hardly ever turns down jobs in Milan, which is a weakness Eames will ruthlessly exploit if he has to.

“Tell us what we want to know,” Jones says, for at least the fourth time. Arthur cocks his rifle in support, somehow managing to combine looking threatening with unutterably bored.

The mark, a Mr Antonio Ragozzi, coughs. They haven’t roughed him up much, just pushed him around and shouted a bit, but he’s not a young man by any means and even that much excitement can be a strain when you’re pushing seventy.

“It won’t do you any good,” Ragozzi says, and all of Eames’ instincts sharpen at the tone of his voice, the expression on his face. Like he’s not nearly as terrified as he ought to be right now. Like he knows something they don’t.

Eames focuses his full attention on Ragozzi, shifting to full wariness. The fact that Arthur does the same thing at the same time makes him feel vindicated, but not necessarily better.

Whatever it is, Jones hasn’t caught onto it. “That doesn’t matter. Just tell us.”

Eames lifts a hand. “Why doesn’t it matter?” he asks, interrupting before Jones can start in on the interrogation again.

Ragozzi smiles weakly. “I have a heart monitor,” he says. “You grabbed me at least ten minutes ago. Any minute now, emergency services will show up to make sure I’m okay. And they’ll notify my security.”

Eames stops breathing. A remotely-monitored device won’t do any good in the dream, of course, but physical reactions occur in the real world based on what’s happening in the mind. The second they started their campaign of terror, Ragozzi’s heart rate would have gone through the roof.

Eames has a half-second to take that in, and another second to realize what Arthur is doing right before the assault rifle swings around and a spray of bullets catches him in the chest.

He sits up, eyes opening and his own heart surging as the adrenaline kicks in. Arthur’s homicidal instinct to go straight for Eames stings a bit, or it would if Eames didn’t know it was a backhanded compliment in its own way. He’s the one Arthur most trusts to handle the situation if they’re all about to wake up to a room full of armed guards.

Luckily they’re not at that point yet. They’re probably close, though; there’s a voice on the answering machine, leaving a message in a calm, even tone: “ _Mr Ragozzi, can you hear me? Help is on the way_.” There’s a green light on the alarm system flashing steadily from its spot on the bare blue wall.

Eames shoves Arthur off-balance, giving Jones another few seconds, although this job has already gone cock-eyed past the ability to recover, and draws the blind to find out exactly how much shit they’re in. No ambulance yet, no police cars. Twelve minutes in the dream, if his count is accurate. Fifty-five seconds in the real world, with this compound.

Behind him, he can hear Arthur moving, and then the heavy thump of Jones hitting the floor. “Eames?” Arthur asks.

“No sign yet. The fastest way will be out the side; take the car around to the neighbour’s and hit the back roads along the highway.” Eames does a cursory check of the alarm system to see if he can disable it, but the damage has already been done. There’s already another message on the machine, most likely from the security company.

“I didn’t get it,” Jones says.

“Worry about it later,” Arthur orders, coiling tubes into the metal case on the bed with familiar efficiency. “We rendezvous in Naples. Get out now.”

Jones doesn’t look thrilled that Arthur’s the one giving orders, but he’s quick enough to obey. Eames hangs back in the doorway as Arthur checks Ragozzi’s pulse and draws the needle carefully out of his vein.

“Eames, go,” Arthur says, without looking up.

“If you can’t get a cab, there’s a park two roads over. That will be your best shot at camouflage,” Eames tells him.

“Eames,” Arthur says again.

“How much longer do you need?” Eames asks, as Arthur sweeps the remains of alcohol swabs and sterile plastic wrappers into his case. He doesn’t directly address the fact that he’s contemplating a shootout with emergency medical services, but in the back of his mind he’s slightly alarmed at himself.

“Longer than you have. Ragozzi hasn’t seen my face, I have the best chance. You need to get far away from here,” Arthur tells him. “Now.”

In the distance, Eames hears sirens. Two minutes now, roughly. Arthur is wiping down everything that might have fingerprints. The roar of an engine starts up; Jones, down in the car park.

Arthur finally looks up at him. “Call if you need me,” he says, “and I’ll come.”

Eames nods once, shortly, and ducks out down the hallway. Behind him, he hears Arthur’s briefcase snap shut.

  


-

  
Eames doesn’t have a dream-sharing device of his own. There are very few of them, fewer still out of the hands of the militaries which developed them, and as Eames doesn’t work dream jobs solo, he’s never had a need for one. He could steal one, of course, with little difficulty, but that would bring a certain amount of heat and frankly he’s never considered it worth the bother.

He does take home the one being used by his team whenever he has a forgery to practice and not a lot of time available, which is generally when he also employs it for purely recreational purposes.

Not just messing about in dreamspace or playing out his own private fantasies (which admittedly he has done on occasion, but then why do the job if you can’t appreciate the perks?), but for a good solid eight hours of true REM sleep. Eames has seen what happens to the dreamers who stop dreaming, the ones whose brains never get a chance to go offline, and he’ll be damned if he ends up like that.

There’s a compound Yusuf has developed which allows Eames to hook into the PASIV and dream without complete lucidity and awareness, so that his subconscious can fill the space naturally without any danger of Eames becoming lost in his own personal version of limbo. He uses it when he has the chance, and as unsettling as it may be to spend an entire night following cartoon rabbits hopping through shrubbery or in his childhood home folding origami with the maid and the elderly gentleman from Eames’ favorite Chinese place in San Francisco, it’s far better than gradual insanity.

Tonight he’s in an office building, one which also has a bedroom incongruously occupying one corner of the floor, like a display model in an IKEA showroom. There are various people in cubicles typing away at keyboards and walking past with their arms full of paperwork. Eames has his own cubicle, he’s pleased to see. It’s decorated with pictures of puppies. He smoothes down the corner of one that’s coming loose, his favorite of a pair of gold and black Labradors, but doesn’t feel any particular need to sit down and start working.

He thinks he might take a trip to the coffee room, and in doing so passes by the bedroom corner, which is done in dark mahogany with tasteful blue-striped linens. It now has an occupant.

“I’m just going to get a coffee,” Eames tells Arthur, gesturing vaguely in the direction of where his mind thinks that might be. “What are you doing here?”

Arthur’s lips twitch. He’s sitting on the side of the bed in a mouth-watering brown suit. His shirt has pale pink and maroon pinstripes, and is open at the collar.

“Apparently,” he informs Eames, “your subconscious thinks this is my cubicle.”

Eames considers this, although most of his attention is still on the idea of a coffee, and wondering whether the receptionist has replaced the hazelnut syrup. It’s the only thing that makes office coffee worth drinking.

“I suppose I can’t imagine you separating work and play,” he replies apologetically. “This was the best I could do.”

Arthur’s expression relaxes into a small smile. “You may be more right than you know,” he admits, leaning back with his hands braced against the blue-striped comforter. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbows. His jacket is gone. “So what you’re saying,” Arthur continues, “is that you’d like to be dreaming about me in a bedroom, but you couldn’t conceive of me being anywhere outside an office.”

“I suppose that’s one interpretation,” Eames agrees. The clock on the wall strikes the hour and a cuckoo pops out. Everyone walking around the office promptly reverse direction and head back the opposite way. Those standing sit down, and those seated stand up. Eames has the nagging feeling he’s meant to be doing something.

Arthur doesn’t allow him to dwell on it. “At least the furnishings are in good taste,” he comments, running one hand over the duvet and examining the molding on the headboard. “Although I’m curious as to why you’ve dreamt up a bedroom complete with me in it and look like you’re still more interested in the coffee room.”

“I have a deadline coming up,” Eames explains. He’s just remembered it. It’s very important, although what Arthur is now doing on the bed could be termed lounging rather than strictly sitting, and it’s distracting.

“You could take a coffee break,” Arthur suggests. Another of his buttons has come open at the collar. His forearms tense when he leans back and shifts his weight, the muscles beautifully displayed below the rolled-up sleeves.

Eames has something of a revelation, then, with Arthur available and apparently willing to be seduced, and he decides this is a really stupendously good idea. He unlaces his shoes, divests himself of tie and jacket, and climbs into the bed.

Arthur is amenable to his attentions the way Eames doesn’t believe Arthur would really ever be. He lets Eames unbutton his shirt and kiss the skin bared below his collarbone. His fingers card through Eames’ hair lightly, patient while Eames pushes the shirt off his narrow shoulders and folds it neatly. As much as he can’t conceive of Arthur outside an office, he has an even more difficult time imagining Arthur’s clothes in a heap on the floor. He sets the shirt onto the chair by the bedside, checking that the cuffs won’t wrinkle, and when he turns back Arthur is right there waiting for the kiss.

Arthur’s skin is hot, hotter than Eames thinks it really ought to be in an office building with the air conditioning turned on. He helpfully removes the rest of Arthur’s clothing to make him more comfortable, but Arthur distracts him from folding the brown trousers along their sharp creases with his hands low on Eames’ back and his lips dragging over Eames’ nipple.

Eames agreeably drops the trousers onto the floor and rolls back onto Arthur.

In the way of dreams, Eames’ clothes have helpfully disappeared, with the exception of his dress socks, which he can’t seem to get rid of. They’re mustard yellow with dark green at the toe and heel, and Eames is distantly horrified by the fact that he’s wearing them while in bed with Arthur.

Arthur just laughs when he notices where Eames’ attention has gone. “Leave them,” he murmurs, and his mouth is like a drug, pulling Eames’ focus away until he can’t remember anymore what had been the matter.

Eames kisses the inside of Arthur’s arm, pulls at the hair of his armpit with his teeth. Arthur moves against him in a very pleasant way, arching and rolling in a rhythm Eames echoes without paying much attention. There’s a freckle on the upper part of Arthur’s arm, just below his shoulder. Eames kisses it.

“Eames,” Arthur says finally, when Eames has all but lost himself in the exploration of Arthur’s skin and muscle and sinew. He shifts and Eames’ body glows from the drag of their hips together. Arthur puts a hand on Eames’ cheek and turns his head. “I need this.”

The fact that it’s Arthur saying that, forthright and with the quiet gravity of a confession, is almost Eames’ undoing. He moves his hips in full agreement, the head of his cock digging in against the soft skin of Arthur’s inner thigh, nudging behind his balls. Arthur shakes his head and wraps his legs around Eames’ thighs, rolling them over so that Eames is flat on his back in the center of the bed.

“There is one ground rule. I’m always on top,” he breathes, taking Eames’ mouth again in another heady, languorous kiss. Eames spreads his legs and pulls his knees up to his chest.

Arthur smiles at him, and slides down until his head is between Eames’ legs. There’s the wet flicker of a tongue against Eames’ skin behind his balls, and he groans and spreads his legs wider.

Arthur licks him, kisses him, tongue-fucks him and suckles at puckered skin hard enough that Eames wonders if he’s leaving marks. He nips and drags his teeth over the muscle until Eames is quite sure he should have come by now, if this was anywhere other than a dream, and if Arthur was paying even the slightest bit of attention to Eames’ cock.

Eames holds out in a haze of sensation until Arthur’s tongue curls inside him, wet and strong and slippery, until his mouth sucks hard over saliva-slick skin when Eames feels like he’s already gaping open, and then he’s digging his heels in those godawful socks into Arthur’s back, urging him up. “Do it, fuck me now,” he says, and Arthur does.

And does. And does.

Eames doesn’t come before the timer runs out, just floats in a wash of pleasure while Arthur takes him apart for what feels like hours, rocking into him deeper with every thrust in the same steady, aching rhythm. Eames kisses him in an improbable feat of flexibility until he’s too far gone to do even that, and then he just lies there while Arthur fucks him into sated exhaustion.

He opens his eyes to empty hotel room and the quiet murmur of the music he’d set to time the kick. His cock is achingly hard in his tracksuit bottoms, and it’s an hour past dawn. Nearly time for him to shower and get back to work.

He’s not particularly embarrassed by what he remembers. Everyone has sex dreams about people they know, including relatives and friends and people of genders they don’t normally find appealing. It’s the brain sorting through debris. Not everything is an unconscious, latent desire manifesting through dreams to be examined and interpreted.

The fact that he’d dreamt about being in bed with Arthur is far less strange than it would be if it were nearly anyone else. Eames has known about that particular desire for years now.

He does wish he could remember more details. The most frustrating part of a fantastic dream is always waking up.

  


-

  
Orla is the opposite of nearly every other extractor Eames has ever worked with. She’s an extrovert, loud and flashy and full of laughter, attracting more attention than most people like them are normally comfortable with, but she makes it work for her. She’s the prize and the diversion and the stinging serpent all in one, and she has an eye for details that easily rivals Eames’ own. With Cobb out of the business she’s arguably at the top of the food chain as far as criminal extractors go, so Eames generally takes the jobs when she calls.

Which, admittedly, isn’t all that often. Orla thrives on gossip and shop talk, sharing stories about people and places and jobs and secrets of the trade. Working with Eames, who prefers to play his hand close to the chest, drives her crazy. Arthur is even worse. The two of them together are probably her idea of a nightmare.

But they are the best, and the job itself is ten different kinds of difficult without even taking into account how they’re going to get the mark under in the first place, so she calls them.

The obligatory first night out involves a lot of talking and drinking, because Orla may tolerate their closed-mouth policy, but she won’t stand for a lack of socializing. Orla’s husband is a chemist, and he’s with them on this job, nursing a beer at the table they’ve claimed in the corner of a local bar. He’s a lot like her in some ways and completely different in others; the same love for gossip and storytelling, but with a military background that leaves him slightly quieter, more aloof.

Arthur smoothly offers to get the next round the second the first glass is emptied, and slides out of his chair to escape to the bar. Bastard. Eames had been about to do the same thing.

“I hear you ran into some trouble in Paraguay?” Orla asks, eyes gleaming with interest. She’s probably been waiting for eight months to pounce on him and ask about that job. If you can even call it a job. Eames prefers the term fiasco.

He gives her the vaguest details, sketching out a general summary of events that won’t satisfy her but will hopefully keep him just on this side of polite, and glances over at the bar when he’s running out of ambivalent things to say. Arthur’s still there, leaning against the wood and drumming his fingers lightly against the top of the bar. He stops when a woman leans over to speak to him, and Eames finds himself smirking almost without noticing, because he knows that look, that body language, that little black dress. This one’s on the prowl.

Beside him, Orla must have noticed as well, because she snorts. “Good luck to her.”

Eames raises an eyebrow to show he’s interested and listening, not taking his eyes off the scene at the bar. “Barking up the wrong tree?” He doesn’t even really need to ask. He still remembers the way Arthur had looked at him when they’d first met; the way he still looks sometimes, few and far between, when he thinks Eames isn’t paying attention.

“That, I don’t know about,” Orla replies, settling in with her elbows on the table and evident relish at the new topic of discussion. “But no one’s ever known him to pick someone up and take them home, or vice versa.”

“Not on a job?” Eames suggests. The woman at the bar has proceeded to light physical touches, grazing Arthur’s sleeve when she laughs. Arthur doesn’t move away, but he also quite clearly isn’t engaging her.

“Not ever,” Orla says. “Dmitri can tell you.”

Dmitri shifts a little when Eames’ gaze flicks, briefly, over to him. “Well, all I can vouch for is three weeks in May,” he admits, rolling his glass in his hand. “Orla and I like to know about the people we work with. We used to do reconnaissance, back when we didn’t know many people in the business.”

Eames’ eyebrows climb into his hairline. Dmitri has his full attention now, pulled away from Arthur and the blonde at the bar. “You did reconnaissance on _Arthur?_ ” he asks. His real question, unsaid, is more along the lines of, _And he let you live?_

“He was busy at first,” Dmitri admits, shrugging. “And I was trained to intelligence work, I know what I’m doing. But you’re right, it didn’t take him long to catch me. I tailed him to three different countries while he was working a job, and in the third one he finally settled in long enough to notice. It only took him three days. By the fourth he was fucking with me, and by the fifth I _knew_ he was fucking with me.” Dmitri smiles. “On the sixth day he went straight to the apartment where I was staying and told me if I had a job for him I should either make an offer or fuck off.”

“So we hired him,” Orla finishes.

Eames smiles, glancing back at the bar, where Arthur is extricating himself carefully and politely. “Of course you did,” he murmurs. They’d have been fools to do anything else.

“The point is,” Dmitri continues, “In all that time, I never saw him with anyone. Not once.”

“And no one else in the business has, either,” Orla says triumphantly. Her expression is amused but not vindictive in any way; Eames has no doubt she’s telling the truth. It hardly proves anything, though. All it means is that Arthur doesn’t fuck around on the job, or if he does, he does so extremely discreetly. He could have been in a long-distance relationship at the time Dmitri was watching him, or he could have been consumed by work, or just not in the mood for a one-night stand. Arthur is uptight, but he isn’t repressed.

Eames looks back at the bar, speculative. Arthur catches his eye this time, having gotten rid of his admirer, and his mouth quirks in a silent question. Eames shakes his head. Arthur taps his fingers on the bar again and looks away for the bartender.

“You two are awfully close,” Orla comments, chin on her hand. “Have you ever seen him with someone?”

Eames’ gaze strays to Arthur again, standing alone and straight in a sea of people, quietly but inarguably apart. “No,” he admits, taking another sip of his drink. “I never have.”

  


-

  
“Take off your pants,” Arthur says.

Eames pauses halfway through the door. He knows he’s in a dream, because they’re working a job, but Arthur isn’t usually in the habit of propositioning him while they’re working. Or at all. If he’s somehow brought a projection in here, Arthur will kill him.

Eames tries flippancy. Usually that buys him enough time to gain his bearings. “What, no foreplay?”

Arthur gestures impatiently. “The wire isn’t working.”

Things make a great deal more sense then. Eames undoes his fly, pulling at the hidden microphone cord taped to his thigh. “I was wondering why you pulled me out of the lavatory right when Mrs Adelmann was spilling her guts.”

“We couldn’t hear any of it,” Arthur confirms, dropping to his knees to swap out the wire. Eames takes one look at him down there and promptly diverts his gaze straight up the ceiling. Arthur is far too close to certain sensitive areas for him to risk any involuntary physical reaction that might be deemed inappropriate.

Their job is being paid for by _Mr_ Adelmann, whose wife’s family has a considerable number of secrets and even more wealth with which to bury them. He’s currently one deck above them on their medium-sized cruise ship, listening in on Eames’ conversation with his wife – or he had been, at least, until Eames’ wire had apparently shorted out. It’s a pity technology can’t even be reliable in dreams.

“Can you get her to talk again?” Arthur asks, his breath doing distracting ticklish things to the inside of Eames’ thigh –

– which is when gravity takes a sudden sharp tilt and Eames is thrown half-on top of Arthur, on the lush carpeting in the captain’s suite.

They both hit the ground rolling, years of training working in concert, until Eames slams shoulder-first into the wooden bed-frame a few feet away. It’s not just them, either; the entire ship is angled, shuddering with the sudden reorganization of gravity.

“That was a kick,” Eames says, bracing himself as Arthur tries to disentangle them without falling further across the room. “What the bloody hell?”

“It’s too early,” Arthur says unnecessarily, crawling over Eames to grip the headboard and haul himself up to the nearest porthole. “Something’s gone wrong topside. She’s trying to wake us up.”

Their architect is the one watching over them right now, a petite Nigerian woman named Safiya. Eames has wanted into her delectable pantsuits for even longer than he’s wanted Arthur. He trusts her at least as much as he trusts anyone, but she’s not the first person he’d put into a firefight if things have gone badly.

“Can you finish the job?” Arthur asks, looking down at him.

“I’m sure she’ll be in the mood to share all of her secrets for a _second_ time with all of this going on,” Eames replies, yanking at the wire taped to his leg. “Bugger this.” He concentrates for a moment and his skin changes shape, melting into the redoubtable Mrs Adelmann for long enough to turn on the control box in his pocket and speak clearly into the microphone. “Of course I never told Francis. The money will stay in the family, through a trust. I could never let the family’s assets pass into the hands of the middle class.”

He flips the control switch off again and tosses the whole mess against the wall currently below them. “It doesn’t matter if it’s her actually saying it, those are the words she used. He never has to know the difference as long as he’s heard it.”

Arthur has just opened his mouth to reply when the cruise ship shudders again, this time accompanied by an ominous crack and the groaning of metal and wood under considerable stress.

Arthur looks out the porthole and back to Eames, grim. “Change of plans,” he says. “The ship’s sinking. Get back to Mrs Adelmann, get her to safety. Keep the dream stable as long as you can.”

“Why can’t you do it?” Eames asks. Their original plan had been for Arthur to take over for Eames once he’d gotten a confession, to arrange a rendezvous between the spouses up on the sun deck so that Mr Adelmann could lay on the guilt. Even if they rush it, they should be able to make something work.

Arthur strips off his jacket and kick off his shoes. “Because I can’t swim,” he says tightly. “And in another five minutes we’re going to be underwater. You’re the only one with a chance of getting her out before she drowns and wakes up early.”

Eames stares at him. “How can you not _swim?_ ”

“I grew up in Iowa,” Arthur defends, not looking terribly thrilled about the situation either. “There wasn’t a lot of opportunity.”

“And you didn’t think it was necessary to mention this before we dreamt up a bloody ship in the middle of the ocean?” Eames demands.

“The ship wasn’t supposed to _sink,_ ” Arthur snaps.

“You can hold onto me, I’ll keep you afloat,” Eames tries.

“There’s no time,” Arthur says. “Four and a half minutes, Eames.”

Eames curses Arthur’s stubborn propensity for self-sacrifice, but he gets moving. Arthur is right; by the time he reaches the end of the hallway, there’s water flooding the deck, and he has to swim through the ballroom to reach the stairs.

Mrs Adelmann is remarkably calm for someone on a sinking ship. She lets Eames steer her toward a life boat, where her husband meets up with them. Eames tries not to count seconds and wonder how long it will take Arthur to drown.

The music for the kick doesn’t start when it should, but Eames has his own method of keeping time, and when he checks his wristwatch they’re nearly there. He counts down the last seconds from the deck while the Adelmanns are arguing about nuptial agreements and wills, and then throws himself off the railing.

Eames wakes up when his body impacts the water, already moving in the next second to strip himself of the IV tube and pack away the equipment. Arthur and Safiya are nowhere to be seen, but there are raised voices inside the Adelmanns’ mansion, shouting and then, like a warning, the sharp crack of gunfire.

He grabs the case and leaves the Adelmanns sleeping, just beginning to stir as the sedative wears off. There’s a two-storey drop from the window to the lawn, which Eames makes easily even though he lands badly on one ankle.

He spots Safiya as she bursts through the front door, running hard for the car. Eames swings in on the other side, bracing himself against the dashboard as she starts the engine and peels out. “Where’s Arthur?” Eames asks, gun in his hand as they swerve down the driveway past the suspiciously empty security station.

“He said he’d meet us at the rendezvous in Rio,” Safiya answers. Her expression is tense, her dreadlocks coming loose from their usual coil at the back of her neck. Eames bites his tongue and doesn’t ask her any questions she doesn’t know the answer to. He’d go back, but Arthur has more of a chance on his own without Eames blundering in blindly after him.

It doesn’t make Eames feel any easier, with the vision of Arthur fighting in panic for air now replaced by one of him bleeding out on the floor of an impeccably-maintained mansion.

Safiya keeps her eyes on the road and pushes the pedal to the floor.

  


-

  
Eames splits up with Safiya once they reach downtown Buenos Aires, leaving her to catch a flight while he takes the train. It’s safer if they travel separately, in case one of them is caught. He doesn’t know how Arthur had planned to make the trip.

He spends two hours sleepless in a hotel room before giving up and turning on the light, pouring himself a drink. He’s taking the first sip when he catches sight of the silver case gleaming in the corner of his room, next to his duffel bag. He’d kept it with him when he’d parted ways with Safiya, feeling responsible somehow with Arthur unable to watch over it.

It’s a foolish idea, but no worse than sitting up waiting for the sun to rise. Before he can think too much about it, Eames has sketched out roughly where he wants to be and plugged himself in.

He’s done a slapdash job with the décor, enough to be vaguely recognizable as the _Praça da Apoteose_ without enough detail to get him into an argument with a purist worried about his ability to distinguish dream from reality.

He does a slow turn around, scanning the area, and by the time he returns to his original position, Arthur is there walking toward him.

“You couldn’t wait a few more hours?” Arthur asks, coming to a halt a few comfortable feet away.

Eames’ throat is dry with relief, even though he knows it’s false. “I needed to see you,” he says. Arthur opens his mouth to reply, but whatever he sees in Eames’ face stops him, brings him a few steps closer until Eames can reach out and pull him the rest of the way in.

“You shouldn’t do this,” Arthur says quietly, his lips brushing Eames’ ear. “It’s not good for either of us.”

Eames has his mouth against Arthur’s neck above the starched line of his collar, his fingers pressing into the skin at Arthur’s nape. He lifts his head and doesn’t bother with a reply, just rubs his mouth against Arthur’s until it yields and Eames can force it wider with his tongue.

Arthur holds himself stiff for a handful of seconds, but then he gives way with a sweet, helpless moan. With that sound, the floodgates holding Eames in check finally burst, and he devours Arthur’s mouth, ripping at his clothing without restraint or decorum.

They fall against a railing and Arthur climbs him like a tree, leg hooking over Eames’ hip as they struggle with each other’s shirts. Eames abandons sucking on Arthur’s tongue for a handful of seconds while he works their belts open, and Arthur pants in his ear, fingers flexing on Eames’ biceps.

“I take it we’re having ‘thank God we’re both alive’ sex?” Arthur asks, rutting against him the moment Eames’ hands are out of their way and their hips resume contact. Eames doesn’t answer, because he can’t; he doesn’t _know_ Arthur is alive, not yet. This is the best he can do, a dream built out of faith and desperate hope.

He only lets go of Arthur once he’s gotten their cocks out, and then it’s because he’s turning around, bracing himself against the railing and pushing his arse back. There’s a pause, a brief moment where Eames is bent over with his eyes squeezed closed and Arthur’s fingertips trail over the ridge of his spine, and then Arthur murmurs, “Okay,” and shifts forward.

Sex in dreams is never the same as sex in real life. Eames feels full, but without the specifics of length and breadth, aware of being warm without feeling the trickle of sweat down the crack of his arse. There’s no need for condoms or lube or fingers, just the slap of skin-on-skin and Arthur’s breath grunting over Eames’ shoulder as they push and shove against each other.

Arthur reaches forward and Eames turns his head, opening his mouth for Arthur to push his fingers inside, feeling the pads of Arthur’s fingers scrape against his teeth and rub over his tongue. He feels stretched now, taken, worry pushed to the back of his mind with the immediacy of Arthur’s hands and hips and cock. He sucks on four of Arthur’s fingers and moans when Arthur’s other hand yanks him back harder onto his cock, Eames’ own jutting and bobbing forward into empty air.

Music swells in the auditorium, blaring from the loudspeakers, and Eames closes his eyes tightly, sucks harder and clenches down, trying to hold on for just a little longer.

He wakes up alone in his hotel room, lying on the bed in his underwear, with the morning sunlight starting to creep through the blinds. He packs his bags and leaves early.

  


-

  
Arthur meets them at the _Praça da Apoteose_ as scheduled, and the sense of déjà vu – always dangerous, in their line of work – is almost as strong as the relief. Arthur explains the relationship demise and crisis of faith that had led to the Adelmanns’ eldest son flying home from Portugal in the middle of final exams (“Really,” Eames inquires, “how could your research have not seen that coming?”) and Eames returns the gleaming silver briefcase to Arthur’s keeping before they all go their separate ways.

The next job, when it comes, doesn’t involve Arthur, and neither does the one after that. Eames knows Arthur is still working, but Arthur doesn’t call him with offers, and he’s never on any of Eames’ teams.

It’s probably coincidence. It’s so frustrating Eames almost wants to grind his teeth and call Arthur to demand to know whether he’s doing this on purpose, if Arthur thinks Eames fucked up somehow and is meting out punishment by forcing Eames to work with inferior point men.

He tries, one night after too many scotches, but Arthur has changed his number again. Bastard.

He does the next best thing, practicing for a forgery. He takes the equipment home, slips a needle into his vein and lets his subconscious roam free, knowing full well he’ll find Arthur there, because lately Arthur has been crowding his consciousness at every waking moment.

Arthur offers him a hot chocolate, defense against the damp cold permeating the air, and Eames walks with him across a bridge straddling a canal in some imaginary city that’s an architectural mash-up of Italy, France and Holland. Eames keeps getting distracted by the flowers hanging in baskets from the lampposts lining the bridge, but Arthur doesn’t seem to mind, just pauses when Eames does and keeps pace with him, sipping at his steaming foam cup.

They stop near the end of the bridge, to lean on the railing and look out over the canal. Arthur remains silent, but Eames just waits, watching the breeze play with his hair, which is loose and soft for once around his face. Finally, Arthur says, “I’m worried about your professionalism.”

Eames is startled into a laugh. “I’ve been unprofessional around you for years,” he says, because it’s what Arthur expects, even though Eames has been nothing of the sort. He’s done his job well, no matter what the situation called for, and he’s barely set a toe out of line. There’s a time and place for relaxing your guard enough to joke around, and corporate espionage inside someone else’s mind is hardly ever it.

Arthur takes another sip of his hot chocolate, still looking out at the water. The sun is halfway through setting. Eames can’t remember when it began. “It’s never interfered with a job before,” is what he says, and then clarifies, “Buenos Aires,” as if Eames needed the prompt.

Eames is justifiably miffed. “I drove away with Safiya and let you get shot at with no backup,” he points out, because as far as he’s concerned, that more than makes up for a few seconds of hesitation during the extraction. “Don’t I get brownie points for that?”

Arthur turns to look at him, finally. “You did,” he says. “But then you lost them again.”

Eames would demand to know what he’s talking about, but it’s a dream and Arthur is right there and somehow his mouth becomes more pressing a need than discovering whatever it is Eames has done wrong. They kiss in the brilliant wash of sunset until kissing isn’t enough anymore, and then the world shifts and they’re under the bridge, Eames peeling off Arthur’s clothes one layer at a time in spite of the cold.

Eames doesn’t think it’s an accident, when Arthur finally takes a job with him three months later as if nothing ever happened, that Eames is in the bar of his hotel at the right time to see Arthur escorting a young redheaded woman out to dinner, impeccable as usual to match her shimmering black cocktail dress. Eames is impressed, in spite of himself, that Arthur somehow managed to find a suitable woman at Eames’ hotel who was available half an hour after they called it quits for the day, and who happened to be looking for a date. With as many hours as Arthur has been working on this job, it’s quite a feat.

He’s not at all surprised that she agreed to the date, however. She’d have to be out of her head to turn down Arthur looking like _that_.

Eames has no doubt, when Arthur’s hand slides to the small of her back, that he’s meant to see this. He’s gotten the message, loud and clear.

What he’s not meant to see is two hours later, when Eames is still in the bar even though he should be asleep in his room, because he simply can’t be arsed to leave, and Arthur walks that same young woman back to the elevators. He kisses her goodnight on the cheek, shakes his head when she very obviously invites him up to her room, and leaves alone.

Eames has half a mind to demand to know what the fuck all of that was about. He’s also seized by the insane impulse to call Orla and fill her in on the latest piece of the puzzle that is Arthur, the unlikely celibate.

He doesn’t. He finishes his whiskey and heads up to his own room, also alone.

  


-

  
In Helsinki, Eames does one of the more outrageously stupid things he’s ever done and steals a dream-sharing device.

The previous owner is an extractor by the name of Klein who may be one of the most cruelly sadistic men Eames has had the displeasure to meet. Eames has done his share of questionably moral things, but torturing a businessman in his dreams for information is a line he hadn’t been prepared to cross. It doesn’t matter that they’re in a dream; the man’s screams of pain are real enough. Pain is in the mind.

After the job is finally, mercifully over, Eames decides the world and his own professional good name would be better off if Klein were removed from the business. He follows Klein to Rotterdam, liberates the silver case from beneath Klein’s hotel bed, and relocates to Auckland to hide out for a while.

New Zealand is one of his favourite places to hide out when there are dangerous people looking for him who are likely armed with loaded and very real guns. He has absolutely no connections there, but no one else does either, because by and large New Zealanders view crime as something that happens to other countries while they go about their lives.

Arthur calls a few days later with a job offer, which Eames regretfully has to decline. “I’m lying low for a bit,” he explains, and there’s a prolonged pause on the other end of the line.

“Oh,” Arthur says, apparently having put the pieces together in short order. “You’re the one Klein’s after, then.”

“Afraid so,” Eames replies pleasantly.

There’s another beat of silence, and then Arthur says, “I’ll cover for you as much as I can,” which, considering Arthur’s vast network of resources, is bound to be considerable.

“Cheers,” Eames thanks him, and heads out to the beach to work on his tan.

The only downside to New Zealand is that Eames is a man of action, and while Auckland is an urban metropolis, it’s not quite enough to keep Eames from getting restless. Few cities are. He does have a shiny new toy available, though, so after the first few days of sunbathing and swimming, he decides to see whether or not he can teach himself lucid dreaming without the aid of specially-tailored chemical compounds.

He can’t. Apparently his subconscious is too curious and easily-distracted to concentrate on anything so mundane as controlling his surroundings.

He does, however, seem to have a knack for dreaming up Arthur, gorgeous and varied in a dozen different locales. Eames hasn’t had this many wet dreams since he was fifteen and couldn’t figure out whether he was more attracted to girls or boys.

“You have to stop,” Arthur tells him, in a cluttered and cramped attic flat, above a café that only serves cupcakes and lets Eames eat as many as he likes free of charge.

Eames really doesn’t see that he has to do anything of the sort, and tells Arthur as much while licking almond icing off of his nipple.

Arthur drags him up and rolls them over, his hips sliding between Eames’ thighs, which have parted for him already. “You have to stop,” he repeats, his mouth hot over Eames’ throat and his hands digging dream-vivid bruises onto Eames’ hips. “Because I can’t.”

Eames would have replied, but that’s when Arthur pushes into him, filling him up all at once so incredibly that Eames moans aloud, and he loses track of the conversation.

It’s a few nights later that he has Arthur spread out on an obscenely luxurious bed, wide enough to fill an entire room and dripping with soft pillows and navy blue silk sheets. Arthur is shamelessly nude and surprisingly passive, seemingly content to lie splayed among the sumptuous bedclothes while Eames kisses the lean, sleek line of his bare calf.

Arthur makes a quiet, surprised noise when Eames digs his fingers into the soft skin behind Arthur’s knee, so Eames explores that next, listening to Arthur sigh and relax back into the embrace of dark blue silk. He moves on to massaging Arthur’s calf next, lips moving over warm skin in the wake of his hands, which are busy pressing into knots of muscle. Arthur’s other leg comes up to hook over Eames’ shoulder and makes an attempt to draw him up higher, but Eames resists, captivated by the curve of Arthur’s calf in opposition to the straight, long line of his shin.

Arthur gives up on trying to pull him away, smiling faintly. “You’re very focused when you’re dreaming,” he comments, running his fingers lightly through Eames’ hair.

Eames finds that he’s slightly offended by that, professionally. “I’m focused all the time,” he argues, letting his teeth graze the tendon behind Arthur’s knee. Arthur makes a gratifyingly loud and involuntary noise.

“You don’t usually spend thirty-five minutes with your undivided attention on my lower leg,” Arthur points out a second later, sounding slightly more breathless than he had a moment ago. Eames smirks. He would press the advantage, but he’s suddenly ensnared by the delicate bones of Arthur’s ankle.

Arthur lets him go where he will, and for a while it’s quiet, nothing between them but the sounds of Eames’ mouth open and wet, sucking on Arthur’s pale skin, and Arthur’s stuttered breathing.

Arthur finally breaks the quiet to say, “You’ve been dreaming a lot lately.”

Eames licks at Arthur’s bare toes and replies, “There’s not a lot else to do in Auckland.”

Arthur laughs quietly, his toes twitching in Eames’ grasp. “I’ve never been there,” he admits. “I went to Christchurch, once. There’s a farmer’s market in the Arts Centre; they had everything you could possibly make out of kiwi.”

Eames goes still.

It could be a fiction his brain is spinning, like the way that sometimes in dreams he knows for a fact that cracking eggs into a pipe filled with salt will cause a bomb to explode, but this has a ring of truth in it that bothers him. It feels like if he woke up now and did an internet search, he’d find out there was a farmer’s market in Christchurch exactly where Arthur had said it was, and yet Eames knows for a fact that he’s never heard this before, not a passing mention in an article or an overheard conversation. Eames loves markets, which Arthur knows, which is why Arthur is telling him about this one. Had Eames known about it, he would have been there already.

His mind focuses with the trained awareness of knowing exactly where ideas originate, and that this one is foreign to him, introduced by an outside mind. He sits up slowly and stares at Arthur, who is only now beginning to realize that something is wrong.

“Eames?” Arthur says cautiously.

It’s a natural dream; Eames can’t imagine a gun into his hand, but he can still do some damage if it becomes necessary. Arthur is unarmed and wholly vulnerable, lying on a bed in Eames’ dream where he doesn’t belong. Because he’s real.

“What are you doing in my dream, Arthur?” Eames asks quietly. One of his hands is resting lightly on Arthur’s leg, a warning should Arthur attempt to run that Eames can cause him significant pain.

Arthur starts to sit up and stops when Eames’ grip tightens. “Eames,” he says again, quietly, but it’s not an explanation and it’s clear that Arthur has no intention of giving him one.

Eames is not prone to forcing information out of people in violent and threatening ways, which is how he ended up here in the first place. He stands up on the bed, instead, and falls backward off the mattress before Arthur can find a way to pull himself out first.

He feels the jolt of gravity and opens his eyes. He’s in his bed in Auckland, equipment whirring away at his side, needle still in his arm. He’s completely alone.

He could still be dreaming, of course. Arthur is more than good enough to keep him running in circles inside his own mind for however long he chooses, but there are various methods Eames uses to determine whether or not he’s in reality, and he checks all of them. Then he looks up the farmer’s market in Christchurch, which is open from eleven to three on Fridays. Then he calls Arthur.

“Eames?”

Arthur sounds newly-woken, voice rough from sleep, and very far away. He’s in Kyoto at the moment, and it’s the middle of the night there, just a few hours different from Auckland.

For years, Eames has expected Arthur to answer his calls with the same tone he uses when they work together. Put-upon, dismissive, patronizing, as if Eames could close his eyes and see Arthur’s patented ‘I don't have time for this’ expression on the other end of the line. But every time, every single time, Arthur picks up the phone sounding alert and slightly on edge, as if he’s aware Eames might be calling him because he’s in trouble, and if he is, Arthur is ready to deal with it.

Sometimes Eames hates Arthur for the little things he does that keep Eames hoping.

“Eames,” Arthur says again, more demanding this time. Eames realizes belatedly that if he just hangs up without saying anything, Arthur may well assume he’s in trouble with Klein and go on a global manhunt. Arthur can be completely ruthless when it doesn’t interfere with his practicality.

“It’s nothing,” he says finally. “Sorry for waking you. I had an unsettling dream.”

Arthur yawns, urgency dissipated instantly once he knows it’s a false alarm, and answers, “That’s why we’re in this profession. No more nightmares. You should work more.”

Only Arthur could manage the word ‘profession’ while being half-asleep at an awful hour of the morning. Eames smiles fondly and tries not to let Arthur hear it in his voice when he says, “Go back to sleep. I’ll call you when I’m available again.”

Arthur murmurs an assent and hangs up before Eames can say goodbye. Eames stands up, pacing once around his bedroom and looking out the window into the still quiet of the night, and finally settles into the armchair in the corner with a book. He’s not on anyone else’s schedule at the moment; he can always sleep through the afternoon tomorrow if he needs it. Tonight he’d rather stay awake.

  


-

  
After a month, Klein gets himself killed attempting a job he has no business trying to pull off. Eames can’t say he’s particularly distressed about this turn of events, and within a day he’s on a plane to Santiago to join Arthur on a job already in progress.

He has more trouble recovering from the jet lag than he’s felt in a long time, and it must show when he joins the team in their workspace the next morning at an hour when his body insists he should be sleeping, heavy with fatigue.

“You look like shit,” Arthur greets him.

“Thank you, Arthur,” Eames replies pleasantly, far too exhausted to come up with anything appropriately biting about Arthur’s current lack of waistcoat and tie, in obvious deference to the Chilean heat.

Arthur gives him a long, searching look until he appears to dismiss the conversation, and introduces Eames around before pointing him at the work table covered with foam-core models and telling him to make himself useful.

The architect’s name is Raoul Esteban, and he is the nearest thing to useless that Eames has encountered in this business. He’s a good architect, but he hasn’t mastered the trick of establishing the atmosphere, the _feel_ of a dream rather than the visual layout. He’s prone to the fantastical, and his designs are so full of nonsensical whimsy that it gives Eames a headache, in his current state, to look at them.

He suspects this is why Arthur asked him to come in the first place, since they have absolutely no need of a forger on this job. Eames has always been good at tweaking mazes into something that best suits their needs, and Arthur’s refined, modern architecture would clash with Esteban’s so horrendously that there’s no chance of their making it a joint project. Eames sighs, rolls up his sleeves, and gets to work.

“Explain to me why you didn’t call Safiya?” he mutters at one point under his breath, when Arthur walks over to inspect their progress and Esteban is off sulking over Eames’ latest three pages of suggested alterations.

“I did,” Arthur replies, a smile twitching at one corner of his mouth. “Her girlfriend said not until the new tax quarter.”

“Bloody business-minded lesbians,” Eames says with feeling.

Arthur’s smile is teased a little further into existence. “See what you can do about that enormous glowing clock he’s put in instead of the moon,” he suggests, and leaves with a self-satisfied click to his step that means he’s fully aware of the daggers Eames is glaring at his back.

A few hours later, Arthur approaches them with an expression that is worrying blank even for Arthur. “The machine is broken,” he says without preamble. “We’re going to need to repair it or find another one.”

Eames glances over at the end table where the multi-million dollar piece of equipment sits, case open, innards spilling onto the nearby chair in a disemboweled heap of wires and tubing. It looks as though Arthur has already taken it apart and done basic troubleshooting, which is likely well beyond what Eames himself is capable of. He’s an old hand at hotwiring cars and defusing bombs, but some technology is outside his level of expertise.

He’s brought Klein’s – now Eames’ – case to Chile with him, unwilling to leave it somewhere unattended and equally unwilling to go without it for any significant length of time. “I may have a solution,” he says mildly, which must be exactly what Arthur was hoping for, because he nods without asking questions and goes back to work. Eames goes to pick his briefcase up from the hotel when they break for dinner, and they continue doing test runs with barely any time lost.

At the end of the day, when they’re packing up to leave, Arthur picks up Eames’ briefcase as if he’s planning on leaving with it. Eames slides in to smoothly a second later to liberate it from Arthur’s hand. “I’ll keep an eye on this,” he says, switching hands to keep the case out of Arthur’s reach.

Arthur twitches. Only a little, but Eames is looking for it. “I usually keep it with me in the hotel safe,” Arthur comments. He hasn’t backed off yet, which means that when Eames turns to face him, they are very much in each other’s personal space.

“Yes, but that was yours. And this is mine,” Eames clarifies deliberately. “While I don’t mind you using it for practice runs, there’s no reason for anyone to have need of it tonight. So it will be coming home with me. Those are my conditions.”

“You would be safer without it,” Arthur says, not batting an eyelash. “Klein might be dead, but it’s common knowledge that you have custody of his former property.”

“So it would be safer with you?” Eames sets the case onto the desk by his side without taking his hand off of it, leaning his hip against the hardwood. His voice hardens slightly when he continues. “Let’s get all of our cards on the table, shall we? There has never been anything wrong with your equipment that you couldn’t fix, and instead of tearing it apart trying, you’ve been going through old tax records. Which leads me to think that whatever’s broken in there is in its current condition because you caused it to be that way.”

Arthur doesn’t move and doesn’t blink, but Eames knows he’s right. Arthur only stays silent when he has no way of denying an accusation, because he knows he can’t lie to Eames without getting caught.

Heartened somewhat by this confirmation, Eames continues. “So either you need two dream-sharing devices for some reason to which no one else is privy, or you want this one out of my hands. Which is it?”

Arthur holds his gaze steadily for a long time before he says quietly, “You look exhausted. It’s hard not to be tempted by sleep aids when you have an easy solution at hand. And if you become reliant…”

He doesn’t need to finish; Eames knows what he’s thinking without hearing it out loud. They all learned from the Cobbs’ misadventure. It’s just that some paid a higher price than others.

Eames feels a dangerously fond thread of warmth curl through his stomach. It’s the closest he suspects Arthur will ever come to admitting any level of personal concern for Eames’ well-being, and he can’t help the half-smile as he picks up the metal case.

“I’ll be careful,” he promises. He can feel Arthur’s eyes still on him as he leaves, but Arthur doesn’t say another word.

 

-

 

He’s the prince of some desert tribe somewhere. Eames knows this because his brain informs him that this is certain knowledge, and also because he’s wearing the official royal turban. He supposes he isn’t unhappy with his kingdom, but he is a bit listless. He wishes Arthur were here.

“Jesus Christ,” Arthur says behind him, and Eames turns to find Arthur bare-chested and gleaming with oil, a scimitar at his hip belted with a wide strap. The dark leather contrasts marvelously with his white Turkish pants.

“Arthur,” Eames greets him, delighted.

“Did you listen to a word I said?” Arthur demands, hand quite probably reaching for a gun and landing on his sword hilt instead. Coupled with Arthur’s expression, it’s not any less intimidating than a semi-automatic.

There’s a rumbling behind them, and Arthur is distracted from further haranguing by the appearance of an entire troop of mounted tribesmen, rapidly heading their way.

“My father’s found out about us,” Eames says, grabbing Arthur’s hand (and conveniently removing it from the vicinity of his scimitar). “He’ll never let you live. Run!”

Arthur does, mainly because Eames gives him no choice, dragging him along into a labyrinth of sandstone caverns, twisting among the rocks with the sound of horses close behind them.

“The elephant,” Eames pants, for Arthur’s benefit. He can see it clearly in his head, majestic and white, outfitted in full purple panoply. “My father’s white elephant. It’s the only way we’ll outrun them.”

“An elephant cannot outrun an Arabian, Eames,” Arthur says, still sprinting alongside him. Then suddenly he halts, dragging Eames with him and nearly dislocating both of their shoulders. “You’re not controlling any of this, are you?” he asks, wonder in his voice. “You’re actually dreaming right now.”

“Arthur,” Eames insists, urgent, as the hoofbeats grow louder, and pulls at Arthur’s arm until he starts running again.

Eventually they end up on the banks of a river, with a fork in the path that leads to a footbridge and another sand-dusted rock walkway running parallel to the water. Arthur starts toward the bridge, but Eames drags him back, staring at the lizard sunning itself at the apogee.

“Not that way,” he says, already running down the other path. “There’s a gecko.”

“What the fuck?” Arthur demands, but not with any serious irritation that Eames can tell. And he can always tell, with Arthur. He’s very good at telling when the right buttons have been pushed.

“A gecko,” Eames repeats, taking a detour under the trees. “It means something can’t be trusted. We used to use it as a slang term.”

They reach a circle of trees and there’s a pontoon waiting for them, tethered to the banks next to a white elephant. Eames unties the knot and leaps from the bank onto the boat, Arthur already waiting onboard to steady him. The riders have just now caught up with them and wave their swords in the air with frustrated impotence, shouting at them both in a language Eames supposes must be Arabic.

Eames collapses onto the deck, relieved, and watches the riders until they fade from sight. When he looks up, Arthur is staring down at him.

“This is getting ridiculous,” Arthur says at last. “It was one thing when you were just pulling me into your sex dreams, but starring in your subconscious’ foreign films is something else.”

Eames doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but his brain catches onto the word ‘sex’ and thinks that’s a fantastic idea. They have just escaped the wrath of his father on their own private pontoon boat, after all. It’s a joyous emotional moment.

“Arthur,” he says, voice low and intent, and Arthur’s eyes sharpen, darken.

“Fuck, Eames,” he says quietly, and then they’re kissing, rolling on top of each other and pushing Arthur’s stupid scimitar out of the way so it doesn’t bang into their knees. “You can’t keep doing this,” Arthur breathes between kisses, sounding almost desperate, which nearly gives Eames pause because he’s never heard Arthur sound that way before. But then, well. Arthur’s pink, wet mouth. Pausing for anything is simply unacceptable.

He is startled into stopping when Arthur rolls on top of him and shakes his head when Eames tries to spread his legs. “Not this time,” he says, straddling Eames gloriously naked and even more gloriously peeved. “You’re fucking up my balance.”

“I thought you were always on top,” Eames says blankly. He’s sure he heard that somewhere. Arthur had been very clear. It’s probably why Eames’ father wants to kill him.

Arthur smiles in a way that shows his teeth. “I am,” he replies, and sinks slowly, achingly down onto Eames’ cock, rocking in increments until he can take it all in. Arthur’s breath hisses out between his teeth and he says, “Fuck,” gorgeously, under his breath.

“We could do other things,” Eames suggests, although he really has no complaints with this arrangement.

Arthur huffs out a laugh that’s more breath than sound. “I’m sort of a traditionalist,” he answers, rocking slightly back and forth as he gets settled.

“A traditional sodomist?” Eames asks, fascinated.

“Eames. Shut up and fuck me,” Arthur requests, and Eames is only too happy to comply, at least as much as he’s able with Arthur riding him fast and hard and perfect.

They collapse an eternity later, Eames too spent to carry on, and Arthur lies quiescently in his arms while Eames kisses his hairline, runs his fingertips along the line of his ribs, tastes the slippery oil still coating his skin.

When he wakes, the jetlag has redoubled its efforts and Eames feels as though he’s been run over by an articulated lorry. All he can recall of the night before is a vague memory of Arthur and elephants.

 

-

 

There’s a three-month gap where Eames doesn’t work any jobs with Arthur. Largely this is due to the fact that wherever Eames is in the world, Arthur is somehow on the exact opposite side of the globe. They both freelance, though, so it’s not really a surprise that circumstances take them in opposite directions for a bit.

Eames expects it to be the way it usually is, for Arthur to call him up one day out of the blue and ask what he’s doing for the next few weeks, but instead he finds that he’s the one picking up the phone.

“Where are you?” he asks when Arthur answers.

“Nassau,” Arthur replies. “Where are you?”

Nassau. Of course. “The other hemisphere,” Eames answers shortly. “Look, I have a bit of a favor to ask.”

Arthur waits for him to continue, but his silence speaks volumes.

Eames ignores him. “It’s a job,” he continues. “New extractor, Smith, won’t stop talking about you and asked if I could get in touch and get you on board. I can’t vouch for him, but…”

“What?” Arthur prompts, once Eames has trailed off.

Eames clears his throat. “I’d feel better if you were on this one,” he says finally. And, because he knows Arthur well enough to know that won’t be good enough, he adds, “You’ll understand when you get here.”

The job should be simple. The extractor is green but he’s competent, the chemist is someone Eames has worked with before and Arthur knows the architect, which is good enough for Eames. If someone’s been vetted by Arthur, there’s practically nothing new Eames could dig up on them if he spent a year tracking them across the globe.

There’s something about this job, however, that doesn’t feel quite right. Eames can’t put his finger on it, but the hairs on the back of his neck are constantly stirring, trying to kick his flight response into motion.

Arthur won’t work with anyone he hasn’t researched thoroughly, or on any mark who hasn’t received the same treatment, and he’s ruthless when it comes to turning over stones until he’s satisfied that he’s learned all he needs to know. Eames feels slightly better with him at hand, even though he can tell that Arthur senses whatever it is as well, by the constant stiffness of his spine and the slight frown marring his features.

“I haven’t been able to find anything,” Arthur says quietly one morning, when the chemist is out picking up a delivery and the architect is under with Smith, dreaming a maze into existence. He rubs at his eyes as he says it, and now Eames has an all-new cause to worry, because Arthur looks dead on his feet.

He bites his tongue because he knows exactly how much his concern will not be appreciated, but the next day Arthur trips over a table and nearly crashes to the ground over two IV lines and a row of glass bottles, saved only by Eames’ swift reflexes.

He still doesn’t bring it up until the others have left, lingering while Arthur makes a few last notes. “You look tired,” he comments finally, aiming for light and landing halfway between casual and concerned. “Not sleeping well?”

“Jetlag,” Arthur excuses, turning slightly so that Eames can no longer see the purple-bruised exhaustion under his eyes. “And I get insomnia sometimes.”

Eames knows well enough how that goes. He leaves it alone and trusts Arthur to sort himself out, returning his attention to the niggling worry that’s infected this job since he showed up on the first day.

The unsettled feeling is distracting enough that it takes four days (and nights) before he realizes that he hasn’t been dreaming about Arthur lately. Possibly it’s because they’re working together now, or because Eames’ dreams are now filled with creeping shadows and ominous figures lurking just out of sight, his subconscious processing the emotions of his waking hours with its usual stunning lack of subtlety.

Before, he never would have given it a thought. Until a year or so ago, Arthur had only ever appeared in one of Eames’ dreams. He’d been standing on a hill too steep to climb, looking away into the distance.

Truly. Spectacularly unsubtle.

Now, however, Eames is – very slightly – embarrassed to realize he’s become accustomed to Arthur joining him in his dreams, following him through the fantasies of rugby matches and once, memorably, weapons shopping, browsing through a refrigerated gun rack in a supermarket.

He puts it out of his mind because, after all, he does have other things to worry about. The job is one day away and Arthur hasn’t found anything yet which would give them a legitimate reason to bolt, which means that at this stage, he probably won’t. Eames doesn’t know how he’s functioning at all; the previous night when they’d gone home, Arthur had been stumbling over his feet with his eyes half-closed.

When Eames gets to the warehouse they’re using as a base, he finds Arthur passed out on the couch, coffee mug precariously tilting in one slack hand. His mouth is open and he’s drooling slightly on the upholstery, long legs hanging off the cushions, and Eames has to bite his cheek nearly hard enough to bleed to keep his face from splitting wide open when he smiles.

He rescues the coffee mug and takes off his coat, draping it over Arthur’s shoulders before he gets – quietly – to work.

 

-

 

It doesn’t matter that Arthur’s research can’t prove their suspicions are justified. Eames still has the instincts of a con man, the gut-deep knowledge of how people work and what their motivations are, and he trusts those more than he trusts a paper trail. Even one that’s been unearthed by the best point man in the business.

He’s rolling up his sleeve for the needle when something about the way Smith is looking at Arthur finally clicks.

“Gecko,” he says to himself softly.

Arthur is close enough to hear him say it. Which shouldn’t matter, because the word doesn’t mean anything to anyone besides Eames. But when Arthur glances up reflexively, he doesn’t look at Eames. He looks at Smith.

Eames stops breathing.

Smith, oblivious, settles in the chair between them and says, “Are we ready to do this?”

The mark is a perfectly unassuming man by the name of Frank Lynch who apparently holds enough secrets about the stock market to make his mind worth plundering. He is also a man with the heart of a nerd, and a fervent passion for fantasy and science fiction.

Science fiction is difficult to pull off at the best of times, so they’ve gone the fantasy route, and they’re playing the game with a twist. On the first level, the mark will be attending a convention where he’ll be offered a chance to make all of his dreams come true, literally: An hour in his own perfect, custom-designed fantasy world. An escape from the mundane reality of his everyday life, courtesy of the best that illegal dream-sharing technology has to offer.

Eames is in character on the first level as a minor cult celebrity, someone the mark will recognize and believe has access to the kind of incentive they’re offering. He plays his part well, leading the mark directly into their trap, which is almost mind-numbingly easy. Mr Lynch can barely contain his eagerness in experiencing a true virtual-reality machine.

The second level is meant to be just Mr Lynch, Smith to do the extraction, and Arthur to keep him safe while he does it. Their architect, Chan, is holding down the dream on the first level, so Eames waits until all three of them are under before pulling out a fourth tube and settling himself beside them. “Cheers,” he tells the uncertain Chan, and drops into the second level.

It’s not that he doesn’t trust that Arthur can take care of himself, but he figures it never hurts to have one more person watching your back. And he doesn’t like that he still feels as though this is all a breath away from going horribly wrong for them.

Smith had been looking at Arthur the way Eames saw other extractors looking at their marks. Cold, evaluating. Anticipatory.

Eames dreams himself a Walther PPS and takes the safety off.

The mark’s projections don’t appear to have turned hostile, but they are behaving strangely. Confused, Eames might say from observing them as he moves through the medieval village they’ve created. Overly cheerful. There are street vendors practically shoving their goods into Eames’ hands without any request for compensation.

Eames feels thoroughly out of place holding a handgun. The projections eye it a bit oddly, but they don’t seem all that put off, so he doesn’t bother replacing it with something less anachronistic. If the shit hits the fan, he doesn’t want to be messing about with a bloody broadsword.

He passes by a row of cottages, a tavern and a pigsty before he finds Arthur, standing warily at the edge of a clearing in which three women of varying age and build are waving sticks in the air and shouting nonsense with great enthusiasm.

“Something’s not right,” Arthur says quietly, without taking his eyes off of the nutters prancing around in the field.

“You figured that out, did you?” Eames replies, checking his gun again.

Arthur’s eyes cut sideways. “What are you doing down here?” he asks. “You’re supposed to be up on the first…”

Eames isn’t entirely sure what happens then. The ground drops out from under them, and a thicket of tree roots surge out of the ground to wrap around their limbs and torsos. It happens so fast that Eames is immobilized before he can react, the gun dropping out of his hand and bouncing several feet away on the earthen floor.

Eames feels the roots constrict around his waist, his chest, threatening to break his arm, and he stops moving. He has a decent working knowledge of fantasy novel conventions. He knows better than to struggle when you’re being held down by magical tree roots.

Arthur doesn’t. “Stop fighting,” Eames yells across to him, because Arthur is in the process of having his ribs broken and he won’t be of any use to either of them once his lungs start filling with blood and an errant branch sprouts through his chest. “Don’t move!”

Arthur stills, although all of his muscles are tense and Eames can see recognition of Eames’ logic warring with Arthur’s own instincts to fight to free himself, fast and hard and vicious.

“Just relax,” Eames instructs. “Try to loosen up a bit. I know it’s difficult for you.”

Arthur glares murder at him, but the tension in his shoulders does ease. Slightly. It’s better than nothing.

Eames hadn’t been in on every detail of the second-level planning sessions, but, “I’m guessing this wasn’t meant to happen.”

Arthur doesn’t dignify that with a response. Arthur, in fact, isn’t even paying attention to him anymore. “Eames,” he says, sharp. “Look at them.”

Eames follows his gaze and sees the peasant-villager projections, now milling around borderline manic, still grinning widely and shouting nonsense while waving sticks. Several of them are wearing choir robes and pointy hats, looking rather like they’re modeling Halloween costumes a few months early.

“Those aren’t Lynch’s projections,” Arthur says quietly, and it finally clicks.

Arthur has only a vague idea of what people in fantasy novels actually do. He thinks it’s something to do with wands and pointy hats and peasants selling their wares, because in Arthur’s mind no society can exist without commerce.

They’re in Arthur’s subconscious. Lynch isn’t the mark at all. Arthur is.

The unsettlingly cheerful peasants are bustling about with renewed vigor. They’ve come up with…dear God. They’ve got an enormous tub of water in a trough large enough to dunk someone, an assembly line of firewood and tinder being built up into a pyre, and a metal monstrosity that Eames knows without having to examine it closely is a rack. There’s no question in Eames’ mind what – or whom – all of this is meant for. He’s worked with an extractor whose methods involved physical torture. And if Arthur dies here, he still has another level up to go.

Eames starts struggling despite the absolute futility of the action and the fact that one of the tree roots is crawling toward his throat.

“Stop,” Arthur snaps, and Eames thankfully listens to him.

“I’d kill you if I could,” Eames tells him shakily, “but I’m afraid my gun is on the ground there and I can’t seem to come up with another one.”

“It’s in the second-level sedative,” Arthur guesses, with a look of concentration that means he must be doing some experimental dream-architecture attempts of his own. “He’s blocking us.”

“He’s after the whole bloody network, isn’t he?” Eames asks, because while Arthur has his own secrets – all of them do – there’s one thing Arthur has that Eames can immediately identify as incentive to target him. Arthur has worked with three-quarters of the criminal extraction workforce, and he keeps meticulous track of all of them. He doesn’t even need a list; Eames has seen him rattle off a current location and contact number for someone on multiple occasions. It’s all in his head.

The peasants are heating cattle brands in a fire now. Eames is starting to sweat.

“This level was only meant to last for an hour,” he recalls, trying to estimate the amount of time he’d spent wandering around before he’d found Arthur. Ten minutes, possibly. More than twenty since the trees had taken such violent dramatic action. Eames had dropped in late, which meant Arthur had been down here for significantly longer before his arrival. “If we can outlast him…”

A sound filters through the trees, light and airy on the breeze. It sounds like Beyonce.

“What,” Eames asks slowly, “is that?”

Arthur’s expression is grim. “It’s my alarm,” he says. “We’re past the scheduled time for the kick.” When Eames continues to stare at him, Arthur shakes his head. “You don’t honestly believe I ever do anything without a backup plan, do you?”

“No,” Eames is forced to concur, “I don’t actually think you trust anyone else to be competent at all.” It’s bloody convenient at the moment, though, so he can’t bring himself to give Arthur any grief for it, much as he wants to. Still: “Beyonce?”

“I like Beyonce,” Arthur mutters. When Eames blinks at him, he adds defensively, “Well, you’d never guess it was me, would you? Which is the point.”

Eames drags himself back on track. “So we’ve missed the kick,” he says.

“Yes,” Arthur confirms. “The alarm goes off in the real world five seconds after the kick is set to happen.”

Eames does some rapid mathematics. “Something’s wrong outside of the dream,” he deduces. “Mi-kyoung would never sell us out for a job. Especially not this one. She’d be destroyed along with everyone else.”

Arthur doesn’t reply. He’s watching the peasants dance like demented puppets around the pyre, waving thumbscrews. Eames is willing to admit he’s getting slightly frantic. They’ve missed the kick, neither of them has a convenient way of offing themselves, and Arthur is about to be given the royal historical-witch treatment. If there are alternative options, Eames isn’t finding them.

“Please believe that I mean only the best when I say that if I could snap your neck right now, I’d do it in a heartbeat,” Eames says grimly.

Arthur gives him an odd little half-smile. “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “There’s something Smith doesn’t know about me.”

Eames raises his eyebrows impatiently. He doesn’t particularly want to see or smell what a cattle brand can do to Arthur’s lovely skin. “Yes?” he prompts, when nothing else happens for a moment.

Arthur’s expression hardens. “I don’t need a kick,” he says, and disappears.

 

-

 

The real world, when Eames slams back up into it, is in chaos. There are three armed men Eames has never seen before in the warehouse, and Arthur has apparently kicked Eames’ chair over for additional security rather than out of grave need, because as Eames watches, Arthur dispatches thug number one with calm, cold efficiency, and Mi-kyoung takes advantage of the distraction to throw acid in the second one’s face.

Eames takes the third because he’ll be damned if Arthur gets two to zero, and then they’re all breathing hard while Arthur searches the unconscious bodies.

“FBI,” he says, tossing a badge onto the concrete floor, and Mi-kyoung makes a soft, fearful noise.

“This is a bit out of their jurisdiction, isn’t it?” Eames inquires, catching the handguns Arthur tosses his way and tucking them into his waistband.

“Apparently not,” Arthur replies. He tips Chan’s chair over and checks the timer on Smith and Lynch, leaving them asleep.

“I don’t particularly fancy being on the most-wanted list for multiple homicide as well as intellectual theft,” Eames says.

“You won’t be,” Arthur says. “It wouldn’t do any good, they already know who we are. Smith’s probably been sending reports from day one.”

Chan has caught on with admirable speed, and is packing his things with a haste that makes up for his inefficiency. Arthur glances at Chan, at Mi-kyoung, and then back at Smith.

“If they’ve called for backup, we could be surrounded,” he says, and Eames steps into the role he’s happy to play in this sort of situation, protecting the civilians while watching Arthur’s back.

They’re cautious when they emerge and make a full circuit of the building, but there’s no one else in sight, and if there are snipers, neither Eames nor Arthur can spot them, which makes a good case for them not being there.

“We split up,” Arthur says when he’s satisfied with their position and they’re back inside. “Get out of the country, don’t go to the States. I think it’s safe to say we’re not getting paid for this one.”

“What about him?” Chan asks, indicating Lynch.

“I’ll handle it,” Arthur says. “Mi-kyoung?”

She hands him a syringe and Arthur sinks it into Smith’s arm, tapping the same vein already pumping him full of dream-inducing sedative. He takes the gun from Smith’s shoulder holster the way he had with the other agents, but he holds onto this one, stashing it under his jacket next to the Beretta Eames knows he’s already carrying.

Eames remembers, suddenly, that he has a bone to pick with Arthur. Now, unfortunately, is probably not the right time.

“I’ll be in touch,” Arthur says. Eames takes it as the dismissal it is and gets the hell out.

 

-

 

Arthur leaves after the job and promptly falls off the grid. Eames has seen him do it before, understands why he’s done it now, and has every intention of doing the same thing. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating when Arthur walks out the door and disappears into thin air. Eames has a few things they need to discuss.

He finally tracks Arthur down in Madrid, at one of the flats Arthur rents when he’s working in Europe. It takes a few weeks of lying in wait and fishing for information, but Eames has nothing pressing on his calendar and Arthur has to resurface eventually.

When he walks in the front door, Eames is waiting for him.

Arthur’s arms are full of groceries, and his other hand is extended to turn on the light switch. He’s not in the best position to handle an intruder, and Eames sees him tense before he recognizes who’s broken into his flat.

Arthur’s eyes flick from Eames to the handgun resting next to him on a lamp table. Eames smiles pleasantly.

“Arthur,” he says. “How lovely to see you.”

“Eames,” Arthur replies, without returning the sentiment. That probably has something to do with the gun.

Anyone else would be worried that Eames thought they’d sold him out; that this visit was in retribution for a job gone horribly wrong. Arthur knows better, of course, but he’s still very careful when he sets down the bags of groceries and pushes the door closed behind him.

“I thought it might be nice if we had a little chat,” Eames informs him. When Arthur doesn’t twitch, Eames says clearly, “Gecko.”

There’s a flinch. Barely perceptible, but Eames isn’t at the top of his field for nothing, and Arthur has more tells than he’d ever admit to. Eames is almost – _almost_ – disappointed by the confirmation.

“There are only three other people in the world who would know what that meant,” Eames continues. “Two of them are dead, and the third is hidden away so well that he might as well be. There’s no possible way you could have had contact with any of them.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything, but there’s not really anything for him to say. Eames picks up the gun from the table and points it deliberately at Arthur’s chest.

“How did you do it?” he asks. That’s the question that’s really been eating away at him, more than the betrayal, the _why_. The why is almost laughable. Arthur doesn’t trust anyone.

“Remote dream-sharing?” Eames presses. “Have you found a way to connect with a subject without sharing the same line? Or…” He takes the safety off, voice turning hard. “Did you find a way to bug my machine and record my dreams?”

That one, loath as he is to admit it, is more likely. Remote dream-sharing would be devilishly tricky, and if the technology existed, Eames thinks he would have heard at least a buzz. A recording device is much more likely, more practical, and, more pertinently, doesn’t involve Arthur fucking him like a cat in heat. Eames has some difficulty wrapping his brain around that one.

“Neither,” Arthur says finally.

Eames’ jaw tightens. “Come now, don’t be shy,” he prods. “Tell me how you did it, and I’ll reconsider putting this bullet through your breastbone.”

Arthur shakes his head slowly. “There’s no bug,” he says. He pauses briefly before he adds, “I got it from your subconscious.”

“I beg your pardon?” Eames says.

“I questioned your subconscious,” Arthur says, slowly and clearly. “We’ve been in how many dreams together now? With you as the subject more than once, in training sessions.” There’s a beat, and then he speaks again. “You know I clear everyone I work with. You were never an exception.”

It stings a bit, put like that, but Eames never expected to be. He wishes he’d known Arthur was mucking about in his head when he thought he’d already been approved, but he can’t even say he’s all that surprised. He is still disappointed. He’d thought they were working for the same team. Apparently the only person on Arthur’s team is Arthur.

“Anything else you’d like to share?” Eames asks evenly. His jaw tics, once.

Arthur shakes his head. Eames wants to know what else he found, what else he knows, what else Eames has been unwittingly giving up because his subconscious trusts Arthur, even though it clearly isn’t a mutual arrangement. He suspects Arthur could have walked away with anything, if he’d wanted the information. It’s no wonder he’s so good at his job. He knows all of them inside and out.

“Well then,” Eames says, putting the safety back on his gun. He stands up, taking his jacket from the arm of the chair and folding it over the crook of his elbow. “I’ll be off.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything until Eames passes him, reaching the door. Then he says, “I could say I’m sorry.”

Eames’ chest constricts, just a fraction. He wishes he could say that he wants Arthur any other way, but that would be a lie. When you care about someone, it’s because of everything they are, faults included. Arthur is a ruthless, stone-cold bastard when it comes to himself or his work, and Eames has always known it.

“Just don’t do it again,” he says, and closes the door behind him.

 

-

 

In spite of Arthur’s explanation, Eames doesn’t dream on his own for a long time. He feels too vulnerable, aware that everything he dreams is something Arthur has potentially discovered, has seen and known all along. Eames doesn’t believe for a moment that Arthur’s vetting process stops after the first job. Arthur could have learned things about him that Eames himself was only just realizing.

He takes a job in Brunei because Arthur won’t – or can’t – get within a hundred miles of it, and he doesn’t want to end up in a position where they have to work together just yet. He knows that eventually he’ll get fed up with inferior team members and too much distance, but that time isn’t now.

He’d be lying if he said it hadn’t occurred to him to turn the tables, to work a job with Arthur and interrogate him as mercilessly as Arthur had done to him. He hasn’t done it because he suspects Arthur’s mind is far more guarded against that type of assault, and he’s sure Arthur would be half-expecting him to try. He’s also not willing to sink to that level. It might be a practical action, but Eames is a confidence man. He has a very clearly-drawn line when it comes to betrayal of trust.

After a month has passed, when he’s irritable and on edge and the silver case under his hotel bed becomes too tempting, Eames gives in and goes under.

He dreams up a dungeon of whips and chains, and his subconscious puts Arthur in as the centerpiece, shackled to a cross and wearing nothing but butter-soft brown leather trousers. The chains encircle his wrists and ankles in a strange echo of tree roots from another dream, winding around his limbs and holding him helpless.

“I’m beginning to think you have a leather fetish,” Arthur says, rather calmly for someone so completely immobilized.

“I don’t believe you’re meant to be talking out of turn in this scenario,” Eames replies, circling him. There’s a riding crop in his hand and a variety of other paraphernalia at Arthur’s feet, floggers and belts and wicked-looking canes.

Arthur smiles faintly. “This isn’t how you want me,” he says, unquestioning.

Eames stops in front of him. “Maybe not,” he says. “But it’s how I have you.”

He can’t decide whether he wants to kiss Arthur or hurt him, pull him down from that cross and hold him or make him bleed. His subconscious is clearly in favor of bleeding, judging by the way the manacles are digging into Arthur’s wrists, but then Arthur is a master at inspiring mixed emotions.

As if reading his thoughts, Arthur says, “There is just one difference between you and I.” He lifts his head and looks Eames in the eye. “I don’t have to be here.”

He disappears like he’s just heard the kick, there one moment and gone the next. Eames reaches out to rest his palm against the cold wooden cross and closes his eyes, breathes in the scent of French cologne that’s already fading away.

When he wakes up, he remembers everything. “Not subtle,” he informs his subconscious, and shoves the case off the bed, rolling over to get some real sleep.

 

-

 

Eames stops in Mombasa on his way out of Nairobi, because it’s a convenient port city and he has friends there, knows the lay of the land. He visits Yusuf and they catch up on each other’s lives both personally and professionally, and the morning after several bottles of truly terrible red wine, Yusuf presses two glass vials into Eames’ hand as he’s staggering around clutching at his head and wondering whether making it out of the country today is worth facing the Kenyan sunshine.

“This one is for the hangover,” Yusuf says, because he is a true friend who would never leave Eames to die pitifully in such a condition, “and this is for later.”

Eames squints at the second vial, making sure he can tell which is which before he tucks it into his coat pocket and downs the contents of the first. It’s horrible, burning his throat and possibly the entire length of his esophagus, from the feel of it. Eames grimaces, blindly accepts the mug of whatever local caffeinated brew Yusuf pushes into his hand next, and drinks until one ghastly flavor overpowers the other.

“Define later,” he says when he surfaces, his voice sounding like roadkill dragged over gravel and his mouth tasting much the same.

Yusuf winks at him. “For when you’re alone,” he says, and then clarifies, as if Eames needed him to, “dreaming.”

Eames would have demanded further details, but just then his headache eases, diminishing to the point of being altogether bearable and taking the churning nausea along with it.

“Yusuf,” he says in tones of deep appreciation, “you are a friend and a gentleman.”

Yusuf sends him on his way with a sandwich that Eames won’t eat unless he is truly desperate, which he very well may be once he’s on the ship, and an order to come around more often. Eames promises with the best of intentions even if he doubts the reality, and heads northwest to Asia.

The vial lives on his bedside dressing table for the first few days while he gets himself settled, doing some preliminary sniffing around for the prospective job that had brought him to China in the first place. He doesn’t forget about it, but it’s not really foremost on his mind until he’s reading in bed one afternoon, arm tucked behind his head and propped up against the wall because there’s no headboard, looking over the top of his book at the faintly amber liquid and allowing curiosity to get the better of him.

“What the hell,” he decides out loud, and pulls out the familiar silver case from beneath the bed.

He opens his eyes to a landscape of blurred colour and warmth, laughter all around him like bells and the reassuring thump of a bass line beneath his feet. Everything is bright and sharp when he focuses on it, picking out specific objects amongst the kaleidoscope of formless shapes. Tinted glass bottles and ornate wooden boxes clutter the surfaces, and modern art collides with pinned-down butterflies splashed onto the walls, their wings seeming to pulsate in rhythm. There’s a scent of smoke in the air, twined with something herbal and fragrant.

Eames feels _amazing._

He spends a while roaming around the bright room, running his hands over everything and marveling at the textures, until the persistent beat of the music and a flutter of butterfly wings drags him to the door. He opens it and steps out into a forest, where a caravan has set up in the moonlight, wagons circling a bonfire.

There are women with hoop earrings and long, full skirts dancing around the fire, tambourines jangling in their hands and cries of joy ululating from their dark throats. There’s more smoke around the fire, curling from long pipes to catch on the clothes and hair of the men smoking. It’s vibrant and perfect, and Eames wanders into the circle and out again, to the far side where there are men and women on the ground, spread out on blankets and canvas tarps, indulging in more carnal pleasures.

Eames has never considered himself one to turn down an orgy, but he walks through the loose tangle of bodies without stopping to participate, not sure what he’s looking for exactly until he realizes that all of the skin on display is too dusky, the hair too long, the curves too generous. He can’t find Arthur anywhere.

No sooner has he had that thought than he turns around and Arthur is there, not dressed appropriately for the scene in the slightest, looking around with an air of frustrated annoyance.

“I keep telling you,” he says as soon as he turns back to Eames, “you can’t keep doing this. I’m not an on-call dream escort service.”

Eames ignores him in favour of walking over and running his hands down the sleek lines of Arthur’s lapels, fascinated by the feel of contrasting fabrics under his hands.

“Eames,” Arthur says, exasperated, and then there’s a strong hand under his chin, guiding Eames’ face up until he’s looking Arthur in the eye. Not for long, though, because Arthur’s skin feels even more incredible than his suit jacket, and Eames closes his eyes to better concentrate on the sensation and the rasping sound of his stubble dragging against Arthur’s palm as he rubs his cheek against it.

Arthur’s hand doesn’t move for a moment, but then another comes up to join it, framing Eames’ jaw until he opens his eyes.

“Jesus,” Arthur says, “You’re high as a fucking kite, aren’t you?”

Eames licks his lips, because they feel dry. Then he thinks about licking Arthur’s. Arthur looks good in the firelight, dusted with orange and gold, and the sounds of the orgy behind him settle low in his stomach, soft gasps intermingled with grunts and throaty moans.

“I’m guessing Yusuf,” Arthur continues, apparently not minding that Eames isn’t carrying his side of the conversation very well. “Because I know you’re not irresponsible enough to dream under the influence, and he’s the only chemist I think you’d trust with an experimental compound.”

Eames decides he’s tired of watching Arthur’s lips move without being able to feel them. He surges forward and Arthur catches him with hands hastily relocated to his shirt front, a startled sound lost in the press of Eames’ mouth.

Arthur resists him for a handful of seconds, during which Eames perseveres with determination and judicious application of tongue until Arthur groans and melts against him, the frustration in the sound at odds with the marked pliancy in his body.

“I already regret this,” Arthur says, but now they have their very own blanket and Arthur is bearing him down onto it, so Eames figures he doesn’t mean it and anyway, there are more important things. Arthur is still wearing all of his clothes.

Eames feels warm all over, tingling where Arthur touches him, seeing bright streaks as the stars above them whirl into a blur. He’s heady with smoke and sweat and skin, and he can’t stop touching, tasting, lingering over everything even when it becomes nearly too intense to bear.

Arthur fucks him to the same rhythm as the tambourines until they reach a frantic crescendo, and then again, slower, sloppier as Eames pulls him down to taste, licking into Arthur’s wet mouth. Eames gets distracted by the feel of the blanket beneath him and the sheen of sweat on his skin and the way the muscles in Arthur’s arms flex when he shifts his weight forward with each thrust.

He’s almost surprised into coming, the second time, and the third, and they’re still touching, still fucking, plastered together in the flickering light and surrounded by the sounds of sex. By the fourth time he thinks hazily that he shouldn’t be able to have any more orgasms as a man, not realistically, and blurs into the body of his favourite forgery, a curvaceous blonde with long legs and Eames’ own generous mouth.

Arthur doesn’t miss a beat, just brings him through another three screaming orgasms. Eames has long been convinced that sex is all-around better if you’re a woman, particularly reaching the finish line. He’s just wondering muzzily how many more this body can take, what with the way his (her) legs are shaking, when Arthur flickers over him in a way Eames is intimately familiar with.

Eames has always known Arthur could probably forge at least to some degree. He wouldn’t be as good a point man as he is without the ability to step in for any other team member in order to get the job done. He can build, and extract, and he understands enough about chemistry to know what’s in the sedatives going into his body, so it stands to reason that someone in his past has taught him to forge. Or else Arthur has spent considerable time with a mirror figuring it out himself, which is also a possibility.

Eames has never seen it firsthand, though, not Arthur’s forgery and not the body he settles into, which is so like his own that Eames loses himself for a time in studying the differences. He has the same short, dark hair, falling loose and sweaty over his eyes, the same pale skin, the same intelligent eyes. His hips aren’t noticeably wider, but he does have more of a curve to his ass, and small, pert breasts that fit his frame. Eames cups them in his hands and rubs his thumbs over the nipples until Arthur lets out a shuddering breath.

“I’ve never seen you like this,” Eames says, wondering. That should mean something, he’s sure. He just can’t think beyond the soft pink nipples and the wet heat between Arthur’s thighs.

“That’s because I don’t usually do this,” Arthur breathes mid-kiss when he stoops down to claim it, his breasts brushing Eames’ own in a way that is utterly delightful and sends shivers up his spine. “I can’t keep up with you tonight.”

Eames thinks something about balance, a long-ago memory, but he stops trying to recall it when he feels Arthur’s fingers exploring, spreading him open where Eames is already stretched and aching from Arthur’s cock. Arthur is the kind of woman Eames always wants, confident in herself and her body and what she wants from Eames. The drag of their nipples together is exquisite, as is the feeling of slender fingers trailing over his swollen, oversensitive clit. Arthur wriggles down, licks into him and Eames moans, higher than his own voice and light, hitching one long, smooth leg over Arthur’s hip.

They’re kissing and humping each other like desperate teenagers when Eames can’t hold onto the forgery anymore, when he shudders and trembles into his own body and then up into Arthur’s, driving himself home while Arthur cries out and drops his head.

He makes Arthur come, again, but he doesn’t have much leverage and Arthur has gone boneless over him, barely rocking back and forth on his cock as he rests on Eames’ chest, panting for breath.

Eames runs one hand through Arthur’s hair, palms his lovely full ass with the other. “I know you have your rule about being on top,” he murmurs, “but would against the wall qualify?”

Arthur shivers, and parts of him clench that cause Eames to briefly see stars and possibly God. “Yes,” he answers, rocking with more heat now, and renewed wetness squelching between his legs where their bodies are joined. “God, yes.”

They don’t get quite that far, because Arthur pushes himself up to ride Eames again, fast and desperate, and Eames puts his hands on those small, perfect breasts and squeezes just enough to break Arthur apart, sending them both tumbling over the edge.

After a few seconds of breathing hard and just lying there together, exhausted, Arthur raises his head from where he’s collapsed against Eames in a tangle of limbs.

“How long did you set the timer for?” he asks.

“Ten minutes,” Eames answers. He remembers, because he hadn’t known whether to use the entire vial on such a short time, but he hadn’t been willing to risk any longer without knowing the compound’s effects.

“You should have come out of it by now,” Arthur says, his brow crinkling slightly.

“Maybe,” Eames agrees. Different compounds slow brain function to different degrees. The fact that he’s aware of this, actually, points to the fact that it’s beginning to wear off. “I think…”

He fights it when he feels the dream start to fade; wants nothing more than to keep holding Arthur/not-Arthur in the low light of the fire with the soft jingle of tambourines and coins in the background. He holds on tighter, but Arthur bends down to kiss him, whispers, “Let go,” into Eames’ mouth, and he falls away.

Eames wakes up decidedly sticky, his cock still softening inside his boxers. “Bloody hell,” he mutters, head dropping back onto the pillow.

He makes a mental note to send Yusuf a thank-you card.

 

-

 

He makes another mental note, the next day, to tell Yusuf the side effects are absolute shit. Eames hasn’t felt this ill since he caught food poisoning in Sri Lanka, and he spends the entire morning in bed, limbs weighed down by fatigue so severe he can hardly lift his head off the pillow.

He manages to drag himself to the couch around lunchtime and promptly collapses onto the cushions, the effort having sapped all the energy he had to spare. He falls asleep to the sound of the city outside, not even motivated enough to turn on the television.

It’s a real dream, he knows that immediately by the way it doesn’t feel anything like real life, how the edges are blurred and there’s nothing really in the distance, just the close-up details his mind focuses in on. He hasn’t had one of these in years, but then this one is also a fever dream, judging by the way the light keeps fading in and out, which might explain it.

He’s lying on a cot, somewhere quiet and peaceful. There’s a leak coming from above him, a steady, regular drip of water that jerks Eames out of his semi-conscious daze every time a drop of it falls. He wishes it would stop, but there are spiders on the ceiling, large and hairy and black, creeping along the cracks in the ceiling, so he can’t get close enough to do anything. He hopes the spiders don’t come down from there; that they stay where they are, pacing above his head.

He doesn’t think of Arthur, but Arthur finds him anyway, kneeling down beside his cot where Eames hasn’t moved, can’t move. Arthur’s hand is cool, which should be unpleasant because Eames is cold, so cold, but instead it feels wonderful.

“Fuck,” Arthur says quietly. “Eames.”

“This is just a dream,” Eames tells him, because he knows it is. He can tell by the tomato sauce, which is beginning to leak through the cracks in the ceiling, thick and full of menace. It will start dripping, soon, instead of the water. Eames hates tomato sauce. He shudders.

“I know,” Arthur says, stroking a sweaty strand of hair back from Eames’ forehead. “But you don’t look like you’re doing all that well in the real world, either.”

Eames’ stomach hurts, and he feels like he might throw up, hungry and nauseated all at once. Something about that list of symptoms makes him think of television dramas, the hints that always exist to lead you to the correct conclusion before the dramatic reveal. “I think I’m pregnant,” he tells Arthur gravely.

Arthur smiles, although it’s gone again in the next instant. “You’re not pregnant,” Arthur assures him. “You’re just sick.”

Something gradually occurs to Eames, and it’s such a strange thought that it takes him a long time to turn it over in his head, to open his eyes and see that it’s true. There are other people here, in his dream. All of them are tired, listless, curled up to nap or blinking heavy eyelids. All of them except Arthur. Arthur has crisp edges and cool skin, and he looks ten times more alert than anyone else Eames can see.

“You’re here,” Eames says, slowly. “In my dream. You’re not a projection.”

“I’m here,” Arthur confirms quietly. He takes his hand back, clasps both around his knees.

“The other dream,” Eames says, because he can’t stop following the thread now, can’t help remembering Arthur calm and capable in the forest firelight, while Eames and everyone else in his head were flying high on Yusuf’s dream ecstasy. “You were real there, too.”

“Yes,” Arthur answers. Eames is surprised at how easily he’s willing to damn himself with that one word. He lied, before. He’s been lying. If he’s been in two dreams, then Eames was right and there have been others. Arthur has been inside his head for months now, and Eames wants to know how, but more than that he wants to know what the fuck Arthur has been thinking.

“Where are you?” Eames growls. He tries to, anyway. Threatening takes a lot of energy, and he’s having trouble focusing, here. The room is throbbing again.

“Halifax,” Arthur tells him, stifling what Eames thinks might have been a sigh. After a pause, he adds, “I’ve been trying to stay away from your time zones so this doesn’t happen, but apparently you’ve started falling asleep during the afternoon.”

Nova Scotia. Eames is going to track him down there and tear him apart. He wants blood. A sticky droplet of tomato sauce falls from the ceiling to land with a plop, splattering a red stain on the white floor.

“Don’t bother trying to find me,” Arthur says, either reading his thoughts or his murderous expression, Eames doesn’t know nor care which. “I’m coming to you.”

He starts to stand, and Eames makes a noise of protest in spite of himself, suddenly irrationally afraid. The spiders are still above him and there’s another drop of tomato sauce pooling in the widest crack, wavering on the brink of falling. Arthur freezes when Eames grabs his wrist.

“Don’t go,” Eames says, his tongue thick, and he hates himself a little for it but the room is pulsing and the spiders are growing bigger and he’s cold, so cold.

Arthur sinks back down again, arranging himself beside Eames’ cot. His hand is cool against Eames’ forehead. “All right,” he promises. “I won’t.”

 

-

 

Eames is somewhere between awake and asleep when his phone buzzes. He’s almost too drained to bother picking up, but he knows the number on the display, so he fumbles it open and answers.

“I’m coming in,” Arthur says. “Don’t shoot.”

The lock clicks a moment later, Arthur either having picked it or acquired a spare key. Eames thinks about pointing a gun at him anyway, because he’s fairly certain Arthur deserves it, but it’s simply too much effort. He can’t be fucked.

Arthur crosses the room to stand by the couch, looking shuttered and inscrutable, as bloody always. “How are you feeling?” he asks finally.

“You lied to me,” Eames says without preamble, because that’s how he’s feeling, like he’s had someone snooping around in his head for God only knows how long and lying to him about it.

“Yes,” Arthur answers.

Eames waits, but that’s all he gets. “I think you owe me an explanation,” he says at last. That’s the least of it.

“I didn’t think you’d believe me,” Arthur tells him.

“Try me,” Eames says dryly.

“I’m a demon,” Arthur says.

Eames stares at him for a beat. Then another. “You’re right,” he says eventually. “I don’t. Try again.”

“I’m a demon,” Arthur repeats. There’s not the slightest flicker in his expression, not a single one of his usual tells. Eames rakes his eyes over Arthur’s body looking for any and all of them. He comes up empty.

“You’re a demon,” he repeats. “A demon who enters people’s dreams and has sex with them.” Because he’s not forgetting about that part, about how Arthur might have started off resisting a few times but had yielded as soon as Eames had gotten close enough.

The corner of Arthur’s mouth twitches. Almost. “There’s a name for that,” he points out.

Eames hadn’t thought about it like that. “You’re an _incubus_ ,” he says, trying it out loud. It feels just as ludicrous as it does inside his head.

“Is it any harder to believe than what we do every day for a living?” Arthur asks.

It is, actually. “That’s technology,” Eames counters. “This is…fantasy. Mythology.”

“Where do you think they got the idea from?” Arthur says.

It’s a little too much to take in all at once. Eames leans back against the arm of the couch and studies Arthur silently. Arthur stands there and lets him. There’s nothing about him that suggests the paranormal, or that this is anything besides an elaborate practical joke. The most reasonable explanation is that Arthur is lying again to protect remote dream-sharing advances in technology, but Eames doesn’t know why Arthur would think he’d swallow this.

Well, no. The most reasonable explanation is that Eames is still dreaming, but if he is, then he has been for a long time, because he knows how he got here, and when, and why.

“So you spend your free time fucking people without their consent or knowledge in their dreams,” Eames says, because if they’re going to pretend, he’s not going to mince words about it.

Arthur doesn’t appear in the least bit flustered. “We can certainly have an argument splitting hairs over how I live versus your sterling morally-sound criminal career,” he replies, “but I don’t think you’re really up for it right now.”

“I get paid for it,” Eames retorts, sitting up straighter. He’d prefer to be on even ground for this if they’re really going to get into it. “What do you get out of it?”

“I stay alive,” Arthur says, and it’s so flat that for a second, Eames actually believes him.

“How?” he asks a beat later.

“Stealing people’s life energies.” Arthur doesn’t move, but his gaze is somehow a gesture encompassing Eames, laid out on the couch and terminally exhausted. “How long have you been feeling tired?”

Eames stares at him. He’d chalked it up to too many international flights and long work hours, but the way Arthur holds his eyes puts a sliver of doubt in his mind. “You’ve been doing this to me,” he says, cautiously.

“I told you in Milan that I’d come if you called me,” Arthur says, tone perfectly even as if he isn’t spouting absolute nonsense. “I warned you to stop.”

“I wasn’t doing it intentionally,” Eames argues, aware that his volume is increasing beyond what might be considered strictly polite by the neighbours. He hadn’t known he was doing anything at all, so he can’t see how the blame for this should rest on him. “You could have been a bit clearer. For future reference, ‘I’m draining your life energy’ is a fuck of a lot more persuasive than ‘you should probably stop kissing me.’” He crosses his arms. “Do you make a habit of trying to kill all of your colleagues, or have I just been lucky?”

There’s a twinge that comes along with that, at the thought of Arthur seducing other people, of being with them the way he’s apparently been with Eames all this time. Eames doesn’t examine it too closely.

“It’s never happened before,” Arthur replies. “Not like this. There are reasons I’m in this field. Nearly everyone who knows me can’t dream anymore.”

“So no one else ever dreams about you?” Eames says skeptically. He has trouble believing that, particularly if it’s how Arthur claims to stay alive.

“Once or twice doesn’t make any significant difference,” Arthur answers. “It’s only a problem when the effect becomes cumulative.”

Cumulative. Like, say, a dozen or more dreams over the course of a few months. Eames feels cold, suddenly, and it’s not just the fever. He thinks back through what he remembers of the dreams, snatches of Arthur and skin and wild flights of fancy. “I don’t remember,” he says carefully, “calling you into that first dream.”

“You didn’t,” Arthur says. “The first time, I found you.”

“To seduce me?” Eames asks. “Or to drain my life energy?”

“It can’t be both?” Arthur asks.

“So you had to come when I called,” Eames says abruptly, his thoughts all crowding in now for space to be heard. There’s something just out of his reach here, something he’s afraid to grasp at. Something about Arthur, coming to him, permeating his dreams time after time even though Arthur knew what it was doing to him. “You didn’t have to stay.”

Arthur’s jaw works for a moment without him saying anything. Finally he says, “I couldn’t not stay.”

 _You have to stop, because I can’t_ , Eames remembers. Arthur has been trying everything he could think of to get Eames to stop dreaming, because he can’t stop anything once they’re in the dream.

It takes a great deal of effort, but Eames pushes himself to his feet, walks to where Arthur stands, unflinching, waiting for him to do whatever he’s going to do.

“Tell me something,” Eames murmurs, closer to Arthur than he’s ever been outside of dreams. “Is it that you can’t stop? Or that you don’t want to?”

Arthur doesn’t reply, so Eames leans in slowly, closer and closer, until he can feel the breath coming slightly fast from Arthur’s mouth.

“Stop,” Arthur says, and it’s quiet, but so final that Eames freezes at once, straightening back up to a somewhat respectable distance.

They stand there, unmoving, for a long stretch of minutes. It feels like the longest game of chicken Eames has ever played, and he has no idea what they’re playing for.

Finally Arthur looks away, toward the kitchen. “Have you eaten?” he asks, and without waiting for an answer, he turns, walking away from Eames to the safety of dishes and cabinets. “I’ll make something.”

“If I fall asleep again, am I going to see you?” Eames asks, not moving yet. Holding his ground.

Arthur looks back at him, and after a moment, he shakes his head. “No,” he says. “You’ll see me when you wake up.”

 

-

 

Arthur is still there the next day, apparently serving as Eames’ self-appointed guardian nursemaid, so Eames has to wait until Arthur goes out to the local bakery for groceries to begin his search.

He’d prefer an actual library, something with an extensive old-fashioned card catalogue and enough bibliographies to cross-reference to his heart’s desire, but he’ll make do with what he can get, which is the vast junk-filled expanse of the internet.

He combs through every database he has access to that might contain information even slightly relevant to his search, which is currently centered on anything to do with dream-walking demonic presences. When he runs out of easy options he switches to the more restricted sources, using one of Arthur’s many aliases. Arthur will be able to trace his search later, of course, but Eames doubts he hasn’t already seen this coming.

He finds astoundingly little. A lot of religious and mythological fictions, a few case studies buried in medical journals and criticized for their lack of credulity, and a handful of published essays which could be read as fiction as easily as memoir.

Still. It isn’t _im_ possible, which is something in itself. Arthur does have a point. If Eames accepts the existence of visiting other people’s dreams through technology, it stands to reason that there may have been a genetic predisposition in existence, kept secret by those gifted with it.

What information there is remains more or less consistent. Every source agrees on both the nature of the dreams and the detrimental effects to the subject’s health. Arthur could easily have done this same search, of course, but it’s an elaborate lie if it is one, and Eames can’t really see the point. There are a very few articles, all on the mythological side, that talk about the connection between incubus and succubus, how they’re two sides of the same being. Eames thinks of Arthur blurring above him, slim hips and small, soft breasts, and widens his search.

He’s more or less talked himself around by the time Arthur returns, accompanied by the scent of fresh-baked bread and biscuits. He has a basket of fruit as well, which he lines up next to the juicer on the counter.

“Does anyone else know?” Eames asks, watching Arthur unpack and arrange his purchases from his place on the armchair. He feels better this morning than he had yesterday, which hadn’t seemed to surprise Arthur when he’d mentioned it.

“No,” Arthur says. He produces a phenomenally wicked-looking knife from somewhere and begins slicing oranges into halves. “You’re the first, besides my parents.”

“I’m flattered,” Eames says.

Arthur lets out a soft huff of breath. “Don’t be,” he says. “No one has ever nearly killed themselves because of me, either.”

Eames would object to that on the grounds of not having had any bloody idea, thanks to Arthur’s habit of playing things close to the chest, but he’s more interested in following his current line of questioning. “Not Cobb, then, either?”

“No,” Arthur says, sounding caught between surprised and firm. “God, no.”

Eames hums. He watches Arthur squeeze fresh orange juice for a few seconds, and then asks, “Does anyone else have the ability to call you the way I did?”

Arthur stills for a moment, hand on the press. “Yes,” he says finally. “But she doesn’t use it.”

Eames wants to ask more, but he can tell by the way Arthur’s expression has closed off that he’d be beating himself against a brick wall there. It’s a topic to save for another time, when Arthur’s guard isn’t up quite so high.

Arthur delivers a glass of juice to Eames’ chair and stands in front of him for a moment with it in his hand, waiting. “Inquisition over?” he asks.

 _Not nearly_ , Eames thinks, but he knows when to push, and now isn’t the time. He does have a certain amount of leverage right now, though, thanks to Arthur’s clearly evident guilt, which is an advantage he might not be able to press later on.

“Tell me one thing,” he says, shifting forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “One truthful answer, and I’ll let it be.”

Arthur looks appropriately wary, but he doesn’t move away. “All right,” he agrees. He smells like bread and citrus, with a tiny bit of pulp stuck to the side of his thumb. Part of Eames wants to lean forward and lick it off, see whether Arthur’s skin tastes the same as it does in dreams.

He doesn’t. Instead he asks, “Why did you visit my dream, that first time?”

Arthur holds his gaze in silence for a long moment. Eames waits him out. He can be just as patient as he needs to be, when there’s something he wants at the end of it.

“I wanted you,” Arthur says at last. It’s more honesty than Eames had expected, and it throws him off-balance for that critical second afterward.

Arthur smiles faintly and holds out the glass. “Drink your juice,” he says.

Eames accepts his fate of being plied with vitamins for the near future, and takes the first sweet sip. “How did you know I was in Shanghai?” he asks, licking pulp from his lips.

Arthur raises an eyebrow. “I thought the inquisition was over,” he replies.

Eames’ mouth twitches up into a smirk. “That’s hardly an inquisition,” he counters. “Unless it has something to do with your demonic powers. Only I can’t recall telling you that in any of my dreams.”

Arthur shakes his head. “I always know where you are,” he says. “Professional trade secret.”

“Ah, the glamorous covert life of the elite point man,” Eames muses.

Arthur turns back to the kitchen, but not in time for Eames to miss the way his mouth quirks up into a smile. “Shut up and finish your juice, Eames.”

 

-

 

Arthur sticks around in Shanghai for the ten days Eames is working a job there, which is not as surprising as it might be if they were anywhere else. Arthur’s secondary languages, aside from Arabic, are all East Asian, and he fits in with the polite, respectful mainstream business society in urban China better than most outsiders there.

He does disappear to his own hotel somewhere nearby once Eames recovers from the debilitating exhaustion which he assumes is a result of overdosing on demonic, life-energy-sucking sexual intercourse for the course of several hours without a break. That’s assuming he’s taking the demonic thing seriously, but if he’s not convinced, well. He’s not _un-_ convinced, either. He can afford to give the idea the benefit of the doubt.

Arthur checks up on him a few days after he disappears, and when Eames – bored and tired of trying to bluff his way through a conversation with the locals any more complicated than pointing and gesturing – extends a lunch invitation, they fall into something of a pattern. Eames works, Arthur – presumably – works, and during their down time they eat dumplings and watch television, with Arthur translating when necessary and Eames making up his own dialogue out loud the rest of the time.

It feels, bizarrely enough, like the tentative stages of friendship, which is unlikely enough when you consider how long they’ve already known each other, and then also the fact that they’ve recently been having substantial amounts of sex in Eames’ dreams.

Eames hasn’t stopped wanting the sex, but he has been wise enough to avoid dreams outside of the workplace, and in spite of the confession, Arthur’s been deftly sidestepping every slightly-more-than-friendly overture Eames has made. Eames had given up when he’d attempted the around-the-shoulders stretching-out date night classic, and Arthur had given him a sideways look like he’d been reminding Eames that he still carried a boot knife.

The job goes well and Arthur meets up with him in Taipei, which is when Eames finds out that the job hadn’t gone as well as he’d thought, and that the mark’s security team had not only pieced together the occurrence of an extraction, but they’d also suspected the existence of an inside man and had combed through the security tapes to find it. They find Eames within six hours of the mark waking up.

He’s glad that Arthur’s with him when it happens, because while Eames is highly observant and used to watching his own back, Arthur is a slightly faster draw.

“Go!” Arthur snaps, firing two more shots at the columns behind which their pursuers have taken refuge. It’s the police, which is much worse than hired goons, because they’re in a fuck of a lot more trouble if Arthur actually kills any of them. Also because there is quite honestly nowhere to go to ground.

“Embassy?” Eames asks, once they’ve gotten out of the train station – too public, too dangerous – and sprinted to catch the back of a canvas-topped truck trundling down the street. Arthur knows this region better than he does, and he always has an exit plan, even when he has no cause to think he may need it. Eames’ exit plan has just been shot to hell.

“Too far,” Arthur replies, looking as antsy as Eames feels. Which is not a surprise, considering that they’re currently sitting ducks on the back of slow-moving vehicle. “We need to move.”

They get out of the city through a string of pedestrian alleyways and borrowed rides on motorized vehicles, but that’s where their luck runs out.

“Shit. _Shit,_ ” Arthur says, when they reach the docks and find a blockade has gotten there ahead of them. He drops back and Eames covers him, returning fire just over the heads of the police waiting for them while Arthur kicks in the door to an old boathouse.

It’s not ideal, but the location is defensible and there’s no other way out, not without one or both of them being shot and killed. The worst that can happen, besides death, is that the police keep them surrounded until they’re forced to come out and surrender. It looks as though the police have reached the same conclusion; after a few tense minutes, the sounds of heavy boots running across wooden planks are replaced by a watchful quiet.

He doesn’t bother pointing out to Arthur that they can’t stay here; Arthur is already prying up floorboards, taking stock of what they have available and gathering supplies. He’s tossed a variety of items into a pile that Eames already knows is labeled ‘Eames’ in his head, things Arthur can’t use but that he thinks Eames might be able to, chemicals and engine parts and tools.

Eames finishes up blockading the door, throwing a ragged piece of cloth over the window to provide them with some small amount of cover. There are only two ways in, unless the police go for the direct method and just knock down the walls, but Eames thinks they’re going to try the easy way first and hope to smoke them out.

The boathouse is built around its own dock, with a small motorboat resting moored in something like fifteen square feet of water. Arthur takes over reinforcing the window with something sturdier than a piece of cloth while Eames strips off his jacket, shirt and shoes, diving into the water to see if there’s a way out.

He comes up spluttering and shaking his head. “Too shallow,” he reports, hauling himself dripping back onto the floorboards. He spits ocean water onto the dock and clarifies, “They’ll see us coming before we even have time to surface for air. And the boat isn’t fast enough to get us out of shooting range in time.”

Besides which, even if by some miracle the police aren’t watching the water, Arthur would never be able to make it as far as they’d have to swim to avoid gunfire. Eames reminds himself to do something about that at a more appropriate time.

Arthur glances at the pile of junk, so Eames picks through it, but he’s already seen most of what Arthur had thrown in there, and it isn’t promising.

“There’s nothing that will make a bomb,” he tells Arthur, setting the can of old gasoline aside as highly flammable and therefore possibly useful. “Nor any sort of workable diversion I can come up with right at the moment. How long can we hold out?”

Arthur looks at the other pile, the one composed of dry rice cakes and half-filled bottles of water, although Eames is sure he already has a rough calculation in his head. “A week,” he estimates. “Maybe less.”

“I suppose we’re in it for the long haul then, aren’t we?” Eames says optimistically, and settles in to fortify.

Around midnight, the music starts.

“Dear God,” Eames groans. “What in God’s name is that?”

“Why are you asking me?” Arthur snaps. He’s wound tight, and the sudden blaring onset of bubblegum pop music doesn’t appear to have improved matters.

“You’re the one who listens to Beyonce,” Eames snipes in return, pleasantly enough. “I thought you might have a clue.”

Arthur mutters something Eames can’t hear over the outrageously loud music and checks the window.

“Pardon, didn’t catch that,” Eames calls, because if he can’t keep his humour, he might as well be dead.

“I said it’s the Black-Eyed Peas,” Arthur returns above the cacophony, and then adds, “Because that has any bearing on our situation whatsoever.”

“On the plus side, it does mean they’ve decided on the passive siege approach,” Eames remarks, crossing to Arthur’s side beneath the window so that he doesn’t have to shout.

“Or they’re hoping this will cover the sound of an approach,” Arthur replies, but he’s sagged back against the wall slightly, seeming to have reached the same conclusion Eames has, which is that all they can do for the moment is wait.

“Any luck?” Eames asks, nodding toward Arthur’s inside pocket where his phone rests. Arthur had gone through a dozen contacts earlier, looking for backup or another way out, but it hadn’t sounded promising.

“Not for a full day at the most,” Arthur answers, closing his eyes briefly. There’s a smudge of dirt across the bridge of his nose. Eames thinks about wiping it off, and reminds himself that this isn’t a dream.

“We have some time, then,” Eames says. He checks his gun and makes himself comfortable.

 

-

 

By dawn, Eames has come to thoroughly loathe the Black-Eyed Peas.

“They couldn’t have chosen a song with more words?” he asks rhetorically, calculating the time by the amount of light filtering through the windows. His phone is off to conserve battery. Arthur has been checking his and looking increasingly unhappy over the past few hours; Eames would hazard a guess that he doesn’t have much left.

The sleep deprivation is taking its toll, which is no doubt exactly what the police outside intend. Eames’ ideas are beginning to deviate from harebrained toward manically deranged, and Arthur has finally stopped twitching from inactivity and moved into listlessness. He looks drawn in the weak light, pale and tired. Eames feels the same way, but Arthur doesn’t wear it well. Seeing him, Eames is struck by a thought.

“How long can you go without sleep?” he asks, and by the way Arthur looks over and meets his eyes, he must understand that the question is meant to encompass more than rest and REM. If Arthur feeds off of energy from other people’s dreams, a few stale rice cakes aren’t going to be able to help him all that much.

“Not as long as you can,” Arthur replies, which is answer enough. Their timeframe has been considerably shortened, then. Eames wonders if this was what had made Arthur so fidgety, during the small hours of the morning.

“Can you…?” Eames pauses, thinking of how to phrase the question. ‘Would you like to let your guard down and fuck me in a Taiwanese boathouse?’ is not as attractive an offer as one might think. He shuffles over slightly into Arthur’s space, gesturing at himself. “It’s hardly a hardship. If you need…”

“No,” Arthur says, quickly and flat. His hand actually comes out between them, warding off any attempts Eames might make at coming closer. After a moment, he lowers it and says, awkwardly, “Thank you.”

By which Eames guesses he means it won’t work, because even Arthur wouldn’t decline an offer to save his life out of pure bloody-mindedness. Or perhaps he would, but only if he had an alternative plan.

That thought leads him back to a dimly-lit bar full of willing bodies, and to a hotel lobby where Arthur had walked away from a sure thing to spend the night alone. “You’ve never,” he says, disbelieving, not truly convinced even after the darting glance Arthur throws him confirms his guess. “You’re…”

Arthur gives him a look that warns him if Eames so much as thinks the word ‘virgin’, Arthur will laugh in his face in a way that will make Eames want to die of shame for his immense stupidity. Considering how many times Arthur has fucked him into exhaustion of a much more pleasant kind than the type he’s now experiencing, Eames can only concede the point.

Still.

“Never,” he repeats, and there’s something of a giddy thrill at the way Arthur rankles, rolling his eyes and obviously uncomfortable.

“No,” he says. “Not outside of dreams.”

Eames has long been familiar with the sliding-scale equation of Arthur’s discomfort. The more grudging Arthur becomes on any given topic, the more fascinated Eames is. “There must be a reason,” Eames presses. Arthur knows how fantastic sex is. Eames doesn’t know why anyone who knows that would possibly choose to avoid it.

“There is,” Arthur replies. He falls silent again, clearly expecting that to be the end of it, but they’re trapped in a bloody boathouse in Taipei; Eames has nothing but time. Finally Arthur yields, exasperated, and, Eames thinks smugly, outmatched. “I would become human. Fully.”

Eames gives that a moment of pause. “And that would be terrible,” he says slowly. “Considering that not being human is what’s going to kill you fastest.”

Arthur shakes his head. “It’s more complicated than that,” he says, and doesn’t elaborate.

Eames may have time, but that doesn’t mean he prefers to spend an entire day dragging admissions from Arthur one painstaking half-sentence at a time. “Try me,” he says, and puts enough finality into his tone to make Arthur think twice after he opens his mouth for another dismissal.

“I would be bound to that person,” he says, inflectionless.

And oh, Eames can see why he’d want to keep that quiet. He has a suspicion the terms of that particular rule don’t have anything to do with consent.

“They would also be bound to me,” Arthur adds, something like a wry smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Just in case you were getting any ideas.”

“I’m sure such a person would be charmed to have the pleasure of your company for an entire lifetime,” Eames answers, blithe and light.

Arthur snorts. “Let’s hold it as a last resort,” he says. Eames gives him a sloppy salute, and congratulates himself on a victory when Arthur can’t turn away fast enough to hide his smile.

 

-

 

They’re pulled out in the middle of the second night via helicopter, by a contact of Arthur’s who kicks up a cloud of dust and puts down enough cover fire to buy them the time to scramble up and out. Eames shouts enough questions to establish that they’re heading across the water and they’re not being pursued, which is enough for him to lean back and let their pilot continue with her rescue.

They trade transports at an airstrip, and after an exorbitant amount of money changes hands, they board a private jet bound for the Philippines. Eames’ clothes are stiff with ocean salt and he smells like he’s spent two days on a fishing dock. He can’t remember the last time he so looked forward to a hotel room.

Arthur is asleep almost before they take off. Eames watches his eyes move beneath paper-thin lids and wonders what he’s dreaming, and with whom, and whether they have any idea what he’s doing with them.

He doesn’t wonder long, because it’s only a matter of minutes before the grainy exhaustion behind his eyeballs overwhelms him, and the instinct to stay awake and stand guard is defeated beneath the soft blanket of sleep.

He crashes at Arthur’s apartment in Seattle while he finds out how much damage the Shanghai job has done with regard to his criminal record and ability to travel. It makes sense for him to lie low, and Arthur has an extensive information network of his own, which he allows Eames to take advantage of while he’s in residence. The arrangement is perfectly reasonable. Then a week goes by, and Eames somehow simply…fails to leave.

It feels a lot like Shanghai, only here Eames is unquestionably in Arthur’s space, mocking his taste in music – which he deserves – and admiring the small, simply-framed paintings hanging on Arthur’s walls. The surprise isn’t that Arthur has a collection of stainless steel cooking knives or a cubby system for his outrageous assortment of shoes; it’s that he doesn’t mind Eames pointing these things out and ribbing him over the framed Escher print on the back of his bedroom door.

Arthur eventually takes a job in New York, leaving Eames under orders not to overwater his cactus and to lock the door behind him if he leaves.

“But how shall I get back in again if need be?” Eames asks artlessly. If there’s a spare key around, Eames is getting custody of it, one way or another. He likes the idea of having access to Arthur, to Arthur’s material things and the bits of himself he leaves lying about, like the dog-eared copy of Descartes on the kitchen counter next to the coffee maker.

Arthur just raises an eyebrow and asks, “Do I need to buy you a new set of picks?”

Eames tries to crack the safe in Arthur’s closet for that jibe, but Arthur had apparently seen that coming, because it’s state-of-the-art and Eames would need serious equipment to even make a dent. He lazes about for another two days, and then gets a call for a job in Hawai’i. He’s on the next plane out. Some things are universal, and all-expenses-paid trips to Hawai’i are one of them.

He leaves his silver briefcase in Arthur’s safe (which he cracks the morning he departs and is so smug about that he texts Arthur a picture) because he won’t need it, and it seems best to leave it protected.

Three days into the job, however, he needs to borrow the team’s equipment to practice and perfect a forgery. It’s impossible not to think of Arthur, even though he knows he shouldn’t, knows that he’ll end up wishing him here, and that if he does, Arthur will…

Eames is in the center of a field of ruins, crumbling pillars and fallen arches littering the green grass. He turns around and sees the architecture as it would have been, as it might have been, once, if this were reality and not a dream. The skeletons of buildings stretch their arms to the blue sky, and their bones lie broken on the ground.

“Eames,” Arthur says, standing atop a splintered pedestal. “What are you doing?”

“I missed you,” Eames says honestly, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “How’s New York?”

“So call me up and we’ll go out for drinks,” Arthur says without answering his question, sounding frustrated and something else, something Eames wants to pin down and can’t. “Don’t do this.”

It’s early in New York, probably somewhere close to dawn. “I’d have thought you’d have finished hunting for the night,” he admits, and sounds bitterer than he’d anticipated, lips twisting. “Sated yourself on the desires of some other poor sot.”

Arthur doesn’t seem to step down from the pillar, but he’s suddenly right there in front of Eames, eyes burning. “I won’t stop wanting you,” he says. “It doesn’t matter how many others there are, I can’t not want you.”

It’s more of a confession than Eames had ever hoped to hear. Arthur shifts, like he’s going to take a step back, and Eames can already see him going up in smoke, vanishing without a trace, fucking someone else in another dream, and he can’t stand it. “Then stay,” he breathes, and pulls Arthur in to kiss him.

Arthur is genuinely angry when they break apart, his chest heaving and his nails digging into the fabric of Eames’ shirt. “Stop. This will kill you if you let it. _I’ll_ kill you. You think this is a joke, but it’s not, it never has been.”

“I’m not laughing,” Eames promises, and kisses him again.

He can feel Arthur struggling to hold out, and the instant that he capitulates and gives himself over, wrapping around Eames and kissing him deeper, both of them scraping their teeth across raw, swollen lips and panting in between moans as they scrabble at each other’s clothing.

Because this is a dream, and Arthur can’t say no. He’ll do anything Eames asks, everything he wants, and when he wakes up he’ll feel guilty for it, sick at the thought.

“Goddammit,” Eames whispers. He forces himself to straighten up, pushing Arthur away. Then he takes a deliberate step backward and trips himself on the weathered foundation of a low stone wall.

He falls and smacks into his own hotel bed on Kaua’i, eyes opening to the whitewashed ceiling and not the azure sky above a forgotten city. It takes everything he has, for a moment, to clench his hands in the bedcovers and resist picking up the bottle of sedative for another round.

He stares at his phone for another few seconds after that, because he’s sure Arthur must be awake now as well, but it doesn’t ring, so Eames doesn’t pick it up. He closes his eyes, pulls the IV out, and goes in the next morning to do the job.

Then he gets on a plane and flies to New York.

 

-

 

Breaking into hotel rooms is worlds easier than picking locks, but it turns out that Eames doesn’t even have to do that. “Mr. Eames?” the front office manager inquires, when Eames leans against the desk with a touch of whiskey on his breath, pretending to have lost his room key. “It’s no trouble at all. We were told you might need a key.”

It takes Eames a beat to recover from that turnabout, to accept the room key being slid across the faux-marble countertop and nod gracefully, as if he hadn’t just been caught – by Arthur, if not the manager – trying to con his way into someone else’s hotel room.

Arthur’s not there when Eames lets himself in, but his garment bag is still on the rack and his briefcase is missing, so Eames assumes he’s working. He makes himself comfortable in the armchair in the corner and waits.

This time, Arthur doesn’t look at all surprised to find Eames in his room when he returns. Eames guesses he’d checked in with the manager before coming up, or perhaps he’d been tracking Eames’ flight and had known when he would land and what he’d do once he was here. In any event, Arthur sets the briefcase down on the counter and steps into the room without a flicker of tension at Eames’ presence. He still has some of the anger from the dream lingering in his eyes.

“What precisely does being bound to you entail?” Eames asks.

Now comes the surprise, the flash of uncertainty that overrides the anger. “This isn’t something you can change your mind about in the morning,” Arthur reminds him, perfectly even.

“Which is why I’m perfectly sober right now, even after sixteen hours on an airplane in coach,” Eames affirms. He stands and walks over to where Arthur stands, stopping a few feet away when he sees Arthur start to tense. “But here’s something I’ve noticed, and stop me if I’m wrong. For all of your protests and arguments, not one has been because you don’t want this.”

Eames moves slightly closer, testing. Crowding.

“If you’ve been keeping me at a distance because you’re not interested, then that’s one thing. But if that’s not really what you want, then I’d be a fool to give up and ruin this for both of us.” Eames turns so that he has Arthur between him and the wall dividing the main room from the kitchenette, and brackets Arthur with his arms braced on either side of Arthur’s shoulders. “Here’s what I know. We could choose to walk away from what we both want, and I’d be jealous every time you slept, knowing it was with someone else. And you might lose your head the first time I end up getting shot working for a team with an inferior point man, because you’re too far away to do anything about it. But in a year or more, we’d both move on. We’d get over each other, and you wouldn’t show up to be furious at me in my dreams anymore, because they wouldn’t be about you.”

Eames takes another step in.

“And that would be the worst part of it all,” he says quietly. “Because I don’t want to get over you.”

Arthur is silent for a long, drawn-out moment. Then he says, “That was quite a speech.”

“Sixteen hours,” Eames reminds him. “I had some time to think.”

“You could regret this later,” Arthur says. “There’s no going back.”

“It’s been you for quite some time now,” Eames says, with something like relief buoying in his chest, because whatever Arthur might be saying, it isn’t no. “Anyway, I’ve always found ‘til death do us part’ incredibly romantic.”

Arthur rolls his eyes slightly. “It’s not quite that dire,” he says.

“So much the better,” Eames says. He leans in, an inch away from Arthur’s lips. “Come to bed with me.”

Arthur searches his eyes for a moment. Eames lets him. Finally Arthur turns his head slightly to the side, a smile playing at the corners of his lips, and says, “I need a shower first.”

Eames straightens up and steps back, giving him space. He can afford to, now. It’s like a drug, knowing that he can invade that space again if he wants to, that Arthur will let him. “I could join you,” he offers, but he’s already tucking his hands into his pockets, leaning casually against the far wall.

“Ten minutes,” Arthur says, and disappears into the bathroom.

When he re-emerges, he’s surrounded by a cloud of steam and his hair is wet, dripping down his neck, and he’s not wearing anything but a small white towel low on his hips.

Eames’ mouth goes dry, and he finds himself sitting up on the bed with his hands hovering indecisively over Arthur’s hips where the towel is tucked modestly in on itself. “You’re a terrible temptation,” Eames informs him, his gaze straying slowly up the line of dark hair leading to Arthur’s navel.

“I figured we were just going to take our clothes off again, so why bother putting them on?” Arthur replies. He nudges forward slightly, just enough that his towel catches against the side of the bed and pulls dangerously lower.

“You’ve been spoiled by dreaming,” Eames tells him, giving in and resting his hands lightly on either side of the terrycloth. “Undressing someone is half the fun.” He pauses. “Well. Perhaps not half.”

Arthur’s smile breaks loose, unexpectedly unfettered. “Would you like me to get dressed?” he asks, looking down at Eames on the bed.

“No,” Eames answers, putting the flat of his tongue against a drop of water on Arthur’s bare skin and following it upward, from his waist to his rib cage. “I have a better idea.”

Arthur stands and lets Eames lick him, arms by his sides only twitching occasionally when Eames runs his tongue over a particular spot. Eames makes a note of every twitch, keeping track until he has a map of Arthur’s body, where to touch and how.

Arthur shivers when Eames is licking the warm, clean water from his bicep, and when Eames looks up, he grimaces. “It’s cold in here,” he says apologetically, sounding slightly put out about that fact.

“Something else you never have to worry about in dreams,” Eames says, halfway to laughing because Arthur gets annoyed like a kitten denied a piece of string, narrowed eyes and needle claws and altogether too adorable to be intimidating. He pulls Arthur down onto the bed before the metaphorical claws can unsheathe, pausing a moment to drink him in before leaning down for a kiss.

They kiss slower than Eames thinks either of them wants, but it’s right for the moment, languid and easy and open. Arthur is letting Eames do what he wants and set the pace, which is a novelty that Eames can appreciate, because Arthur has never been one to cut him too much slack, anywhere else but here.

The towel has to go. It’s maddeningly rough against Eames’ hands when contrasted with all of Arthur’s glorious skin, and it’s directly in the way of what Eames wants right now. He peels it open and breaks away from Arthur’s mouth to look down at what he’s uncovered.

His mouth starts watering again. “Oh, yes,” he says, and Arthur makes a sound that might be either an aborted laugh or a half-grumbled protest, but either way he shuts up when Eames scoots down and gets his mouth over Arthur’s cock.

Arthur’s hips surge up so fast that Eames barely gets his hands on them before he chokes, a strangled string of curses mingled with demands tearing loose from Arthur’s throat. He’s so responsive, so incredibly unrestrained in his reactions that it makes Eames’ head spin, knowing it’s because Arthur’s never felt this before, that everything is new. He licks a line up Arthur’s cock, unabashedly delighted at the groan it provokes, and slides his hands beneath Arthur’s arse, kneading experimentally.

Arthur waits until Eames slides wetly, messily off of his cock before fisting a hand in his hair and pulling his head back. “You’d better not be getting off on being first,” Arthur warns, his breathing too rapidly uneven to make it a believable threat.

 _First and only_ , Eames thinks, and rubs his cock against the bedclothes. “Never,” he replies, and the quirk of Arthur’s mouth says he doesn’t believe Eames’ breathless attempt at false sincerity, but he’s willing to let it slide if Eames goes back to what he’d just been doing.

“In that case,” Arthur says, spreading his legs and crooking one knee, planting his foot against the mattress, “yes, you may.”

Eames smiles against the inside of Arthur’s thigh; bites down and smiles wider when it makes Arthur tense up all over and then slowly relax, unspooling into Eames’ hands. “Lube,” he says, and when he looks up, Arthur looks completely blank.

Of course. Arthur would have next to no reason to have lube. He almost certainly won’t have condoms, either.

“Luckily,” Eames informs him, rolling off the bed and pretending not to notice and be thrilled by the broken whimper of protest Arthur makes when he leaves, “I came prepared.”

He hadn’t planned, specifically, for this, but there are two condoms and a small bottle of lube in his toiletry kit (because getting caught with only one condom assumes the sex won’t be good enough that you’ll want to go again in the morning, and Eames prefers to think of himself as an optimist), which he fishes out of his travel bag and tosses onto the bed. He takes a second to drink in the sight of Arthur, naked, all sharp edges and imperfections the way he never can be in dreams, and has to get a literal grip on himself before he can crawl back onto the bed.

“I take it the on-top rule is no longer in effect, now that you’re free of the requirement to lie on dreamers?” Eames asks, popping the cap on the lube and rubbing a generous amount over his fingers.

Arthur tucks his arm behind his head and smirks at Eames from the crook of his elbow. “Is this your way of asking if you can fuck me?” he asks.

Eames shakes his head, smiling, and rests his hand on Arthur’s thigh, gently pressing his legs open wider. “One step at a time,” he says, and rubs his fingertip against Arthur until the muscle yields and envelops him in heat.

There’s a small frown on Arthur’s face, as if he’s not altogether pleased with the proceedings, and it makes Eames laugh out loud. When the frown deepens, Eames leans over to kiss the inside of Arthur’s knee, and then higher up on his thigh.

“It gets better,” he promises. He wonders if Arthur has ever had to do this part, or if his liaisons have always been agreeable to jumping into the middle of proceedings, when the mundane preparations of lubricating and stretching aren’t required.

“It’s not bad,” Arthur says, but he’s still frowning, still clearly trying to process it all. Eames doesn’t say anything else; he makes his point with his mouth, closing again over the head of Arthur’s cock, and with the second finger he slides in slowly alongside the first.

When Eames curls his fingers, Arthur jerks, and Eames can see the conflicting emotions on his face, the strangeness and discomfort warring with the knowledge that this is supposed to be arousing, that theoretically he should be arching off the bed right now into Eames’ hands.

Eames chuckles. “Just relax,” he says. He can’t make it up to three fingers yet, not comfortably, but he scratches the nail of his little finger behind Arthur’s balls, against his perineum, and his own cock aches when Arthur’s body jerks again, surprised and eager.

He kisses Arthur hungrily, lapping him up with rough strokes of his tongue, using his free hand to hold Arthur’s jaw and hold him open and still for Eames to plunder. He licks at Arthur’s nipple because it had made Arthur squirm, earlier, and it does again now, twisting Arthur’s body on Eames’ fingers.

“This is what I love about sex,” Eames confesses, voice rough, tracing Arthur’s lips with two fingers. “How messy and surprising and ridiculous it is.” He lays a kiss on Arthur’s mouth and says, “This is why only having you in dreams would never have been enough.”

Arthur pulls him down and kisses him hard, pushing his hips up and rocking against Eames’ stomach, rubbing off on his abs until Eames reaches down and finishes stroking him off, fast and sloppy. Arthur’s whole face goes slack when he comes, shock and pleasure in his expression before he recovers enough to kiss Eames again, shaking slightly in the aftermath.

“Jesus Christ,” Arthur says, and then they both reach for Eames’ clothes together, tearing at his belt and pants and pushing up the shirt that’s gotten caught rucked up under his armpits. Arthur’s grip is too tight at first, and his palm is too dry, and his knee glances off Eames’ ribs when he moves the wrong way, and it’s absolutely perfect.

Arthur bites his lip in concentration while he jerks Eames off, which is so goddamn sexy that Eames can hardly stand it, and he gets impatient toward the end and mutters, “Come on, just do it, Jesus,” which is apparently all the catalyst Eames needs to go tumbling arse over tits into orgasm.

He falls on top of Arthur while he catches his breath, and rests more of his weight on Arthur than is strictly necessary just because he wants to feel Arthur squirm out from under him in irritation.

Once they’ve resettled, though, Arthur’s hands are gentle and curious, tracing Eames’ muscles and tattoos. Eames knows how he feels; he wants to touch as well, to explore the way he’s never been able to properly in dreams, with everything slightly off and out of focus.

Arthur notices him watching and smiles. “Again?” he suggests, eyebrow quirking.

Eames laughs, full and long, and rolls Arthur beneath him, because it’s not as if he doesn’t want to. “Darling,” he says. “Allow me to teach you about the refractory period.”

 

-

 

Eames wakes up with a low-level awareness humming in his bones, like a mild current from a live wire. It takes him a moment to figure out what it is, because he’s always aware of Arthur in a room, to some degree, but this is stronger. He knows exactly where Arthur is in the bed. He knows that he’s still sleeping, that his heart rate is slow and steady.

Eames breathes in and cracks his eyes open to the flood of sunlight coming through Arthur’s bedroom window. Arthur’s head is on the other pillow, his body resting a few feet away from Eames, not touching but curved toward him like a bow.

He can feel it when Arthur wakes up, just before his breath catches slightly and his eyelids flutter. Eames stays where he is, soaking up everything he can, this image and this feeling and this moment.

Arthur blinks once, then twice, waking up slowly. “Hi,” he says, raspy from sleep.

Eames smiles involuntarily, something catching in his chest at the sight of the sleep dust in Arthur’s eye and the scent of his morning breath. “Good morning,” he returns.

Arthur closes his eyes again, and something shifts in the current running through Eames’ body, solidifies. Arthur opens his eyes then, studies him briefly. “It will fade,” he says, fingertips crawling a few inches across the sheets between them. “The bond. It’s just new.”

“I don’t mind,” Eames tells him honestly. He might eventually, depending on how distracting it is and whether it interferes with his job, but just now, it feels right.

Arthur smiles softly and stretches out, turning his face into the pillow. Something trips in Eames’ chest, something that didn’t come from him, and he reaches out without thinking, tipping Arthur’s chin up so he can see his face.

“What?” he asks. “What is it?”

“Nothing,” Arthur says, turning easily into the touch. “It’s just been a long time since I’ve slept without dreaming.”

Eames’ smile grows until it almost hurts. “Get used to it,” he advises, and feels it in the pit of his stomach, buoyant and wondrous, when Arthur laughs.


End file.
